e they abode the
coming of the foe, and it was now hard on five o'clock.

But Christopher went up to Goldilind where she stood amidst of the
spearmen, hand turning over hand, and her feet wandering to and fro
almost without her will; and when he came to her, she had much ado to
refrain her from falling on his bosom and weeping there. But he cried
to her gaily: "Now, my Lady and Queen, thou shalt see a fair play toward
even sooner than we looked for; and thine eyes shall follow me, if the
battle be thronged, by this token, that amongst all these good men and
true I only wear a forgilded basnet with a crown about it."

"O!" she said, "if it were but over, and thou alive and free! I would
pay for that, I deem, if I might, by a sojourn in Greenharbour again."

"What!" he said, "that I might have to thrust myself into the peril of
snatching thee forth again?" And he laughed merrily. "Nay," said he,
"this play must needs begin before it endeth; and by Saint Nicholas, I
deem that to-day it beginneth well."

But she put her hands before her face, and her shoulders were shaken
with sobs. "Alas! sweetling," said he, "that my joy should be thy
sorrow! But, I pray thee, take not these stout-hearts for runaways. And
Oh! look, look!"

She looked up, wondering and timorous, but all about her the men sprang
up and shouted, and tossed up bill and sword, and the echo of their
cries came back from the bowmen on the left, and Christopher's sword
came rattling out of the scabbard and went gleaming up aloft. Then words
came into the cry of the folk, and Goldilind heard it, that they cried
"Child Christopher! King Christopher!" Then over her head came a sound
of flapping and rending as the evening wind beat about the face of the
wood; and she heard folk cry about her: "The banner, the banner! Ho for
the Wood-wife of Oakenrealm!"

Then her eyes cleared for what was aloof before her, and she saw a dark
mass come spreading down over the bent on the other side of the river,
and glittering points and broad gleams of white light amidst of it, and
noise came from it; and she knew that here were come the foemen. But
she thought to herself that they looked not so many after all; and she
looked at the great and deft bodies of their folk, and their big-headed
spears and wide-bladed glaves and bills, and strove with her heart and
refrained her fear, and thrust back the image which had arisen before
her of Greenharbour come back again, and she lonel