e fire-crake or bombard or any such unsoldierly weapon, which is
only fitted to scare babes with its foolish noise and smoke."

"I have heard much even in the quiet cloisters of these new and dreadful
engines," quoth Alleyne. "It is said, though I can scarce bring myself
to believe it, that they will send a ball twice as far as a bowman
can shoot his shaft, and with such force as to break through armor of
proof."

"True enough, my lad. But while the armorer is thrusting in his
devil's-dust, and dropping his ball, and lighting his flambeau, I
can very easily loose six shafts, or eight maybe, so he hath no great
vantage after all. Yet I will not deny that at the intaking of a town
it is well to have good store of bombards. I am told that at Calais they
made dints in the wall that a man might put his head into. But surely,
comrades, some one who is grievously hurt hath passed along this road
before us."

All along the woodland track there did indeed run a scattered straggling
trail of blood-marks, sometimes in single drops, and in other places in
broad, ruddy gouts, smudged over the dead leaves or crimsoning the white
flint stones.

"It must be a stricken deer," said John.

"Nay, I am woodman enough to see that no deer hath passed this way this
morning; and yet the blood is fresh. But hark to the sound!"

They stood listening all three with sidelong heads. Through the silence
of the great forest there came a swishing, whistling sound, mingled
with the most dolorous groans, and the voice of a man raised in a
high quavering kind of song. The comrades hurried onwards eagerly, and
topping the brow of a small rising they saw upon the other side the
source from which these strange noises arose.

A tall man, much stooped in the shoulders, was walking slowly with
bended head and clasped hands in the centre of the path. He was dressed
from head to foot in a long white linen cloth, and a high white cap
with a red cross printed upon it. His gown was turned back from his
shoulders, and the flesh there was a sight to make a man wince, for it
was all beaten to a pulp, and the blood was soaking into his gown and
trickling down upon the ground. Behind him walked a smaller man with his
hair touched with gray, who was clad in the same white garb. He intoned
a long whining rhyme in the French tongue, and at the end of every line
he raised a thick cord, all jagged with pellets of lead, and smote his
companion across the shoulders unti