“He is a gallant youth,” said Chavigni; “he always was from a boy; but where is your wounded companion?”
“Wounded!” cried the Norman. “Odds life! he’s dead. It was enough to have killed the Devil. There he lies, poor fellow, wrapped in his cloak. Will you please to look upon him, Sir Counsellor?” and snatching up one of the torches, he approached the spot where the dead man lay, under a bank covered with withered brush-wood and stunted trees.
Chavigni followed with a slow step and gloomy brow, the robbers drawing back at his approach; for though they held high birth in but little respect, the redoubted name and fearless bearing of the Statesman had power over even their ungoverned spirits. He, however, who had been called Pierrepont Le Blanc by the tall Norman, twitched his companion by the sleeve as he lighted Chavigni on. “A cowed hound, Norman!” whispered he—“thou hast felt the lash—a cowed hound!”
The Norman glanced on him a look of fire, but passing on in silence, he disengaged the mantle from the corpse, and displayed the face of his dead companion, whose calm closed eyes and unruffled features might have been supposed to picture quiet sleep, had not the ashy paleness of his cheek, and the drop of the under-jaw, told that the soul no longer tenanted its earthly dwelling. The bosom of the unfortunate man remained open, in the state in which his comrades had left it, after an ineffectual attempt to give him aid; and in the left side appeared a small wound, where the weapon of his opponent had found entrance, so trifling in appearance, that it seemed a marvel how so little a thing could overthrow the prodigious strength which those limbs announced, and rob them of that hardy spirit which animated them some few hours before.
Chavigni gazed upon him, with his arms crossed upon his breast, and for a moment his mind wandered far into those paths, to which such a sight naturally directs the course of our ideas, till, his thoughts losing themselves in the uncertainty of the void before them, by a sudden effort he recalled them to the business in which he was immediately engaged.
“Well, he has bitterly expiated the disobedience of my commands; but tell me,” he said, turning to the Norman, who still continued to hold the torch over the dead man, “how is it ye have dared to force my servant to show himself, and my liveries, in this attack, contrary to my special order?”
“That is easily told,” answered the Norman, assuming a tone equally bold and peremptory with that of the Statesman. “Thus it stands, Sir Count: you men of quality often employ us nobility of the forest to do what you either cannot, or dare not do for yourselves; then, if all goes well, you pay us scantily for our pains; if it goes ill, you hang us for your own doings. But we will have none of that. If we are to be falcons for your game, we will risk the stroke of the heron’s bill, but we will not have our necks wrung after we have struck the prey. When your lackey was present, it was your deed. Mark ye that, Sir Counsellor?”
“Villain, thou art insolent!” cried Chavigni, forgetting, in the height of passion, the fearful odds against him, in case of quarrel at such a moment. “How dare you, slave, to—”
“Villain! and slave!” cried the Norman, interrupting him, and laying his hand on his sword. “Know, proud Sir, that I dare any thing. You are now in the green forest, not at council-board, to prate of daring.”
Chavigni’s dignity, like his prudence, became lost in his anger. “Boasting Norman coward!” cried he, “who had not even courage, when he saw his leader slain before his face—”