"He was ever a surly swine," Morgan growled. "Even as we need him most, he fails us thus!"
Dickon offered no opinion upon this. "It fell on him in the night," he said.
Morgan leant over as far as his iron casings permitted, to note what share of breath remained in the smith's body. Then he rose, and looked the lad from top to toe with his sullen single eye.
"Get you into his foot-gear, then, and follow on," he snarled curtly.
Then for the first time the other man-at-arms spoke. He was a huge, reddish warrior, with the shoulders of an ox, and a face which flamed forth from out the casings of his head-piece like a setting winter sun.
"Were it not better to leave him?" this Rawly asked. "If he chance to get his head broken, how will Sir Watty make shift for a smith?"
Morgan sneered this down. "The lout hath not the wit for the tenth part of a smith," he said. "Between this and Bromfield there are a dozen of the craft to be had at the bare mention of a halter."
Thus it was that a soldier's life opened before Dickon.
He made haste to don his father's sleeveless chain coat and sallet. Then, choosing a crossbow and sheaf of quarrels for himself, he gathered such other weapons as the smithy held, and carried them out into the open. Now the troop was forming, and the start close at hand.
The lad had seen many of these rallies for a raid; but this one, wherein he was to have part, had a new glory in his eyes. He rubbed shoulders with the men who were making ready against the ride. With the boldness of an equal he bore a hand to help them fit the armor to their backs. There was none to make him afraid. When a knavish hobler offered to force his cross-bow from him in exchange for a rusty pole-axe, Dickon smote him on the head with a full man's might and heart, and kept his weapon.