“That’s he, the heron, again! Catch him! Stop him! Shoot him!”
But that was not so easy. As Ivo pushed his horse through the crowd, careless of whom he crushed, he saw a long lean figure flying through the air seven feet aloft, with his heels higher than his head, on the further side of a deep broad ditch; and on the nearer side of the same one of his best men lying stark, with a cloven skull.
“Go to Wrokesham!” shrieked the lean man, as he rose and showed a ridiculously long nose, neck, and legs,—a type still not uncommon in the fens,—a quilted leather coat, a double-bladed axe slung over his shoulder by a thong, a round shield at his back, and a pole three times as long as himself, which he dragged after him, like an unwieldy tail.
“The heron! the heron!” shouted the English.
“Follow him, men, heron or hawk!” shouted Ivo, galloping his horse up to the ditch, and stopping short at fifteen feet of water.
“Shoot, some one! Where are the bows gone?”
The heron was gone two hundred yards, running, in spite of his pole, at a wonderful pace, before a bow could be brought to bear. He seemed to expect an arrow; for he stopped, glanced his eye round, threw himself flat on his face, with his shield, not over his body, but over his bare legs; sprang up as the shaft stuck in the ground beside him, ran on, planted his pole in the next dike, and flew over it.
In a few minutes he was beyond pursuit; and Ivo turned, breathless with rage, to ask who he was.
“Alas, sir! he is the man who set free the four men at Wrokesham Bridge last night.”
“Set free! Are they not hanged and dead?”