And he put the armor on.
But he trembled as he did it. Atheism and superstition go too often hand in hand; and godless as he was, sceptical of Providence itself, and much more of the help of saint or angel, still the curse of the old warrior, like the malice of a witch or a demon, was to him a thing possible, probable, and formidable.
She looked at him in pride and exultation.
“It is yours,—the invulnerable harness! Wear it in the forefront of the battle! And if weapon wound you through it, may I, as punishment for my lie, suffer the same upon my tender body,—a wound for every wound of yours, my knight!” [Footnote: “Volo enim in meo tale quid nunc perpeti corpore semel, quicquid eas ferrei vel e metallo excederet.”]
And after that they sat side by side, and talked of love with all honor and honesty, never heeding the old hag, who crooned to herself in her barbarian tongue,—
“Quick thaw, long frost,
Quick joy, long pain,
Soon found, soon lost,
You will take your gift again.”
CHAPTER XI. — HOW THE HOLLANDERS TOOK HEREWARD FOR A MAGICIAN.
Of this weary Holland war which dragged itself on, campaign after campaign, for several years, what need to tell? There was, doubtless, the due amount of murder, plunder, burning, and worse; and the final event was certain from the beginning. It was a struggle between civilized and disciplined men, armed to the teeth, well furnished with ships and military engines, against poor simple folk in “felt coats stiffened with tar or turpentine, or in very short jackets of hide,” says the chronicler, “who fought by threes, two with a crooked lance and three darts each, and between them a man with a sword or an axe, who held his shield before those two;—a very great multitude, but in composition utterly undisciplined,” who came down to the sea-coast, with carts and wagons, to carry off the spoils of the Flemings, and bade them all surrender at discretion, and go home again after giving up Count Robert and Hereward, with the “tribunes of the brigades,” to be put to death, as valiant South Sea islanders might have done; and then found themselves as sheep to the slaughter before the cunning Hereward, whom they esteemed a magician on account of his craft and his invulnerable armor.