ace of early years. Living principally in
the open air, trained from infancy to feats of activity, their muscles
were sharp and prominent, their aspects had something of masculine
audacity and rudeness; health itself seemed in them more loathsome
than disease. Upon those faces of bronze, vice had set its ineffable,
unmistaken seal. To those eyes never had sprung the tears of compassion
or woman's gentle sorrow; on those brows never had flushed the glow of
modest shame: their very voices half belied their sex,--harsh and deep
and hoarse, their laughter loud and dissonant. Some amongst them were
not destitute of a certain beauty, but it was a beauty of feature with a
common hideousness of expression,--an expression at once cunning,
bold, callous, licentious. Womanless through the worst vices of woman,
passionless through the premature waste of passion, they stood between
the sexes like foul and monstrous anomalies, made up and fashioned
from the rank depravities of both. These creatures seemed to have newly
arrived from some long wayfaring; their shoes and the hems of their
robes were covered with dust and mire; their faces were heated, and the
veins in their bare, sinewy, sunburned arms were swollen by fatigue.
Each had beside her on the floor a timbrel, each wore at her girdle a
long knife in its sheath: well that the sheaths hid the blades, for not
one--not even that which yon cold-eyed child of fifteen wore--but had on
its steel the dark stain of human blood!

The presence of soldiers fresh from the scene of action had naturally
brought into the hostelry several of the idle gossips of the suburb, and
these stood round the table, drinking into their large ears the boasting
narratives of the soldiers. At a small table, apart from the revellers,
but evidently listening with attention to all the news of the hour, sat
a friar, gravely discussing a mighty tankard of huffcap, and ever and
anon, as he lifted his head for the purpose of drinking, glancing a
wanton eye at one of the tymbesteres.

"But an' you had seen," said a trooper, who was the mouthpiece of his
comrades--"an' you had seen the raptrils run when King Edward himself
led the charge! Marry, it was like a cat in a rabbit burrow! Easy to
see, I trow, that Earl Warwick was not amongst them! His men, at least,
fight like devils!"

"But there was one tall fellow," said a soldier, setting down his
tankard, "who made a good fight and dour, and, but for me and my
com