or you would not speak of loving them. I
would as soon take Beelzebub himself to my arms. I fear, mon gar., that
they have taught thee but badly at Beaulieu, for surely a bishop knows
more of what is right and what is ill than an abbot can do, and I myself
with these very eyes saw the Bishop of Lincoln hew into a Scottish
hobeler with a battle-axe, which was a passing strange way of showing
him that he loved him."

Alleyne scarce saw his way to argue in the face of so decided an opinion
on the part of a high dignitary of the Church. "You have borne arms
against the Scots, then?" he asked.

"Why, man, I first loosed string in battle when I was but a lad, younger
by two years than you, at Neville's Cross, under the Lord Mowbray.
Later, I served under the Warden of Berwick, that very John Copeland of
whom our friend spake, the same who held the King of Scots to ransom. Ma
foi! it is rough soldiering, and a good school for one who would learn
to be hardy and war-wise."

"I have heard that the Scots are good men of war," said Hordle John.

"For axemen and for spearmen I have not seen their match," the archer
answered. "They can travel, too, with bag of meal and gridiron slung
to their sword-belt, so that it is ill to follow them. There are scant
crops and few beeves in the borderland, where a man must reap his grain
with sickle in one fist and brown bill in the other. On the other hand,
they are the sorriest archers that I have ever seen, and cannot so much
as aim with the arbalest, to say nought of the long-bow. Again, they are
mostly poor folk, even the nobles among them, so that there are few who
can buy as good a brigandine of chain-mail as that which I am wearing,
and it is ill for them to stand up against our own knights, who carry
the price of five Scotch farms upon their chest and shoulders. Man for
man, with equal weapons, they are as worthy and valiant men as could be
found in the whole of Christendom."

"And the French?" asked Alleyne, to whom the archer's light gossip had
all the relish that the words of the man of action have for the recluse.

"The French are also very worthy men. We have had great good fortune in
France, and it hath led to much bobance and camp-fire talk, but I have
ever noticed that those who know the most have the least to say about
it. I have seen Frenchmen fight both in open field, in the intaking and
the defending of towns or castlewicks, in escalados, camisades, night
forays, bushme