Leofric heard the same sound which had attracted Jack's attention. It seemed to proceed from a short distance off, and they hurried along till they reached the corner of Great Jewry Lane where it joins Shydyard Street (now Oriel Street), where the shouting began to take more articulate form, and the boys heard the words, "North, North!—South, South!" bawled and yelled from scores of throats.
"It is some fray betwixt the clerks," said Jack, who had not listened for naught to Gilbert's tales during the night they camped by the fire in the forest. "Did he not tell us that they were banded into two or more great bodies, North and South, and that they were ofttimes coming to blows together? Haply we had better stand close in this doorway, and let the rout go by. Clerks are killed by their fellows in the open streets every year, if what we hear be true, for nothing worse than belonging to the adverse faction."
Leofric, who though no coward was by nature placable, and adverse to blows, was ready enough to take this counsel, and set his back against the door in the little porch which offered shelter to the pair. The fight seemed to be coming their way, and presently a few clerks scudded by, yelling, laughing, cursing; brandishing their clubs and hurling all manner of foul and derisive epithets at those behind them, from whom, however, they evidently thought it well to flee. Others followed, some having cut heads or bleeding noses, dishevelled, out of breath, angry, yet inclined to make game of themselves and others all the while.
"North! North! North!" they shouted, interlarding their words with many an oath and epithet that need not be transcribed. "Ye coward Southerners, ye only dare to attack when ye be ten to one. We will give you back as good as ye gave! North! North!"
Plainly the pursuers were close behind the flying feet of the last fugitive, when suddenly the rout was brought up short by the appearance of a tall man in a long gown, with a weapon at his side, who came round the corner at a quick pace, and confronted the rioters with stern glances.
"How dare you disturb the peace again, you good-for-nothing brawlers?" he cried in ringing accents. "Let me have such another scene within the week, and I will have some of you to answer for it in the Chancellor's Court. As if it were not enough that you must be fighting the burgesses, fighting the citizens, fighting the Jews, but ye must be fighting one another too, and that in broad daylight, when you should be at your studies. To your Halls and lodgings, every man of you; and if I hear of such another brawl as ye come from lecture, I will deal differently with some of you."
The clerks, who had pulled up suddenly at sight of this stalwart functionary, now began to slink away this way and that. Many of them were mere lads, led on by the boyish instinct of fighting; a few were evilly-disposed rogues, who were always to be found in the streets, ready for any brawl; others, again, were scholars who had followed in the wake of the crowd, with an idle interest in anything that savoured of a fight rather than with any particular desire to take part in it.
These sorts of frays were of almost daily occurrence in old Oxford, and only when they became too numerous or too severe was any particular notice taken of them. The students for the most part lived and brawled, studied and played, very much as it pleased them, and a fight, with many or with few, was part of the day's work.
Jack espied Gilbert at the edge of the crowd, and made for him quickly.
"What is the matter? and who is he that stayed the fight?" he asked, with eager curiosity; and Gilbert answered, laughing,—