company of men-at-arms, five
score to wit, all in white armour, and rides with them along the
causeway. But early in the night, ere he had set out, he had bidden a
twelve score footmen make their way quietly in knots of five and ten
and thereabout to a certain place fifteen miles as the highway led
from Eastcheaping, where the said causeway, craftily made, went high
raised over a marish place much beset with willow and alder, an evil
place for the going of heavily-laded horses. But of these same
footmen, some half had bows, and the rest spears and swords; all the
Dalesmen went with these, and Osberne was the captain of the whole
company, but with him was an old grey-beard, a sergeant tried in many
wars, and a guileful man therein, and to him and Osberne Sir Medard
showed what should be done.

So now the Baron and his came riding along the causeway, ten hundreds
of men in all, lightly and in merry fashion, for they had said that
they would go knock at the door of Eastcheaping and see what the
carles were about there; and it was hard on noon. And first came
riding an hundred or so of tall men well armed in white armour, their
basnets new tinned; and they came to a certain place where on either
side was abundance of thick alder bush and the ground soft between,
and there was the causeway wider by a spear-length than its wont for
some two score yards. Well, this hundred passed by on their way, but
when they were clean out of sight, and the next company not yet come,
up rise a half dozen of men from out the alders on either side, and
come on to the causeway: they are clad in homespun coats and hoods,
though if any had looked closely he had seen hawberks and steel hoods
under the cloth. These men lay some things down on the causeway in the
very midst between the narrows, and then get them back into the marsh
again.

No sooner are they gone but there comes the sounds of weaponed men
going, and presently there is the head of a much bigger company coming
on to the wide space betwixt the narrows, three hundreds of men at
least. They were armed and mounted as well as they might be, but kept
not very good order. When the first of them came to the place where
the marsh-lurkers had been, they found lying athwart the causeway, one
on each side, two dead porkers, two dead dogs, two hares, and in the
very midst a fox, these also dead. The first men wonder at this, and
get off their horses and handle the carcasses; then they call othe