An hour passed; another hour; the second hour after noon began. Richard was still in the maltman's storehouse, scarcely stirring from the post he had originally taken up, listening intently to every sound that penetrated from without. Osbern had perched himself upon a sack by his father's side, as motionless except for his fingers, about which he twined a piece of string in cat's cradle pattern. The voices of women reached them, the laughter of children, the swirl of water among the roots of the willows. Falling cobwebs powdered these two with dingy flakes; conflicting currents of air made the malt-dust dance all around them; they heard the patter of rats' feet, the dogged gnawing of a mouse. Suddenly a woman shrieked in terror——
"Yonder—see yonder! Horsemen! horsemen! Yonder the death of us all! My man—where is he? Gone—left me here helpless! The Frenchmen! The Frenchmen!"
Panic seized the women of Ludford (there were some twenty of them): tearful, voluble, or outwardly composed, they carried, dragged, drove their children up the street, across the green, and out of the town, in frantic search of masculine protection.
Richard and Osbern stepped stiffly out into the street, brushing their garments as they went. Yes, there they were, the horsemen, filing along the hill-side track. The apathetic sun of late winter lent a sulky radiance to lance, mace, and scabbard, ringed hauberk, conical helm, and kite-shaped shield. Nearer they came—sixty in all, Richard guessed. The cavalcade appeared at the farther end of the street: men-at-arms, pursuivants, knights, esquires, and, behind his banner, riding alone, William fitzOsbern, Earl of Hereford and Lord of Breteuil, in the full splendour of vigorous manhood.
"Seignior!" cried Richard the Norman—"Seignior, faictes grace a moy, qui suys de vostre sang!"
William fitzOsbern threw an amused glance at a forgotten cobweb that adhered to the speaker's head.
"Mort Dex!" said he. "Whom have we here?"
"Richard of Overton, son of Hugh, son of Osbern, son of Walter of Rye in the Cotentin, where my nephew is now lord. Sir Count, the mother of my grandsire was cousin and nurse unto Herfast your own father's father, and unto noble Dame Gunnore his sister, spouse of our then Duke."
"Thou art the Scrope. I have heard of thee. One named Perot spoke of thee with the King at Westminster; and that British fellow of thine—Howel they call him—guides the company of Ralph de Mortemar behind us upon the road. I have pressed on with another to conduct me, for I would reach the city of Hereford as soon as may be."
"Seignior, I have dwelt for twenty years within your county that now is," said Richard, dropping on one knee, "and I pray of you justice and your puissant aid! The rascal English do me wrong, and they will not consider my cause, for I stand alone. One Ulwin invades certain of my lands and a mill which I myself set up beside the river: he first exchanged this Ashford for money and cattle of mine, then pleaded his no-right to sell."