The veteran continued looking up the hill in silence. The sun shone broadly over the shelving meadows; a few white sheep wandered browsing; all was still but the distant jangle of the bell.
“What is it, Appleyard?” asked Dick.
“Why, the birds,” said Appleyard.
And, sure enough, over the top of the forest, where it ran down in a tongue among the meadows, and ended in a pair of goodly green elms, about a bowshot from the field where they were standing, a flight of birds was skimming to and fro, in evident disorder.
“What of the birds?” said Bennet.
“Ay!” returned Appleyard, “y’ are a wise man to go to war, Master Bennet. Birds are a good sentry; in forest places they be the first line of battle. Look you, now, if we lay here in camp, there might be archers skulking down to get the wind of us; and here would you be, none the wiser!”
“Why, old shrew,” said Hatch, “there be no men nearer us than Sir Daniel’s, at Kettley; y’ are as safe as in London Tower; and ye raise scares upon a man for a few chaffinches and sparrows!”
“Hear him!” grinned Appleyard. “How many a rogue would give his two crop ears to have a shoot at either of us! St. Michael, man! they hate us like two pole-cats!”
“Well, sooth it is, they hate Sir Daniel,” answered Hatch, a little sobered.
“Ay, they hate Sir Daniel, and they hate every man that serves with him,” said Appleyard; “and in the first order of hating, they hate Bennet Hatch and old Nicholas the bowman. See ye here: if there was a stout fellow yonder in the wood-edge, and you and I stood fair for him—as, by St. George, we stand!—which, think ye, would he choose?”