arons and portes and kings? Nay lad, look again and tell me if thou
seest the Long Shaw; this is called Woodneb, and therein is a captain
of mine who hight Edward the Brown, and therein shall we rest a while
ere we enter the Wood Masterless. And hence onward to the Long Shaw is
a twelve days' journey if all go well."

Now when Osberne heard that he was the better content, for in good
sooth that desert-hold seemed all too strait to keep within its walls
the valiancy of Sir Godrick and his host.

So presently the gates were thrown open, and folk gaily clad and armed
came forth to meet their lord and his new men, and before them went
Edward the Brown, a short thick man, but very sturdy-looking, his hair
cut short to his head; small brown eyes [had he] and short nose, so
that he looked somewhat like a bear; but a valiant man he was, and a
trusty.

There then they had good entertainment, as men who were at home again,
and they abode there seven days [ere] they departed, and had good
disport of hunting and hawking; and there was much minstrelsy and
tale-telling in the hall a-nights: and there must Osberne tell what
stories he knew of the war of Eastcheaping and the matters of the
Dale, both the tidings of his own day and of the days of his fathers;
and therewith were men well content, for a good tale-teller he was.

No little also he talked with Sir Godrick, and especially on one
matter: for his mind dwelt much on those same Skinners whom they had
overthrown, and he kept weighing them against those evil aliens with
whom he had fought across the Sundering Flood, and who, he deemed full
surely, had borne away Elfhild. And on a day he asked Sir Godrick
concerning it, and if these two sorts of wretches had aught to do with
it; and he told him all the story of that battle, and what like his
foemen were in body and array, and of their horses and armour and
weapons, and of their shrieks and the gibbering of their Latin.

Then said Sir Godrick: "I will tell thee what meseemeth of thy foemen
of that day, that they be of the kindred of these Black Skinners,
though of another tribe, so that men call them the Red Skinners,
though ye shall know that neither the Red nor the Black call
themselves Skinners, which is but a name of terror which the
country-folk have fixed on them for their evil deeds. Now further,
although the Red Skinners be worse than any man else, they are not so
bad as the Black. That is, they are more like men and le