But Martin turned to him, laid his finger on his lips, smiled kindly, and saying “You promised!” caught up a loaf from the table, slipped from among them like an eel, and darted out of the door, and out of the close. They followed him to the great gate, and there stopped, some cursing, some laughing. To give Martin Lightfoot a yard advantage was never to come up with him again. Some called for bows to bring him down with a parting shot. But Hereward forbade them; and stood leaning against the gate-post, watching him trot on like a lean wolf over the lawn, till he was lost in the great elm-woods which fringed the southern fen.
“Now, lads,” said Hereward, “home with you all, and make your peace with your fathers. In this house you never drink ale again.”
They looked at him, surprised.
“You are disbanded, my gallant army. As long as I could cut long thongs out of other men’s hides, I could feed you like earl’s sons: but now I must feed myself; and a dog over his bone wants no company. Outlawed I shall be before the week is out; and unless you wish to be outlawed too, you will obey orders, and home.”
“We will follow you to the world’s end,” cried some.
“To the rope’s end, lads: that is all you will get in my company. Go home with you, and those who feel a calling, let them turn monks; and those who have not, let them learn
‘For to plough and to sow,
And to reap and to mow,
And to be a farmer’s boy.’
Good night.”
And he went in, and shut the great gates after him, leaving them astonished.
To take his advice, and go home, was the simplest thing to be done. A few of them on their return were soundly thrashed, and deserved it; a few were hidden by their mothers for a week, in hay-lofts and hen-roosts, till their father’s anger had passed away. But only one turned monk or clerk, and that was Leofric the Unlucky, godson of the great earl, and poet-in-ordinary to the band.