rs
to look at them; and some deem this the work of dwarfs or fairies or
such like; and others say this is a sign or token of the up-country
folk to rise upon them, and that they had best send men a-foot to
search the marsh; and others that they should send tidings to the
rearward folk. And some say one thing, some another, and all the while
their fellows are thronging into the wide place till they are all
crowded together, and not a third part of them know what has befallen,
and deem that something has gone amiss; and the rearward fall to
drawing their swords and crying out, To it, to it! Slay, Slay!
Deepdale, Deepdale! till scarce a man knew his right hand from his
left.

But amidst all this turmoil a great voice (and it was Stephen the
Eater) cried out from the marsh at the right hand: "Go back, ye swine,
to Deepdale." Then another sang out from the north: "If ye can, ye
dead dogs." Then Stephen again: "This time ye must run like hares."
"Learn lore of the fox next time, if ye can," cried the northern
voice. And even therewith was the twanging of bowstrings from ether
side, and the whistle of shafts and spears, for the foemen were near
enough, and men and horses fell huddling on the causeway, and the
shafts rained on without abatement, and the Deepdale riders were in
sorry case indeed; and many of them were good knights well tried in
the wars.

Then some gat off their horses and entered the marsh, and found no
better hap there, for they were speedily slain by axe and sword of the
Eastcheapers; or they squattered in the mire and yielded them to
whomsoever was before them, of whom Stephen gat a good knight
full-armed. But Osberne was otherwhere. For some of the Baron's men
spared not to turn their backs and ride all they might rearward; but
they went but a little way into the narrows ere they saw steel before
them, and there across the causeway stood the company of the Dalesmen,
even such as were not with the bowmen. Desperately they drave at them;
but it was all for nought, for the first four fell, they and their
horses, before the long spears of the Dalesmen, and the others were
cumbered with the wounded and the slain, so that they might not come
on a-horseback. Howbeit, some dismounted and fell on sword in hand.
Then forth from the ranks of the Dalesmen came a slim warrior in a
long hawberk and bright basnet and a shield on his arm, and he put his
hand to his left side and drew, and it was as if a beam of fell blu