“Hereward, Hereward, the French will kill you!”
“Not while I have your armor on. Peace, little fool! Are you actually afraid for Hereward at last?”
“O heavens! when am I not afraid for you!” and she cried herself to sleep upon his bosom. But she knew that it was the right, and knightly, and Christian thing to do.
Two days after, a long ship ran out of Calais, and sailed away north and east.
HOW HEREWARD CLEARED BOURNE OF FRENCHMEN.
It may have been well, a week after, that Hereward rode from the direction of Boston, with Martin running at his heels.
As Hereward rode along the summer wold the summer sun sank low, till just before it went down he came to an island of small enclosed fields, high banks, elm-trees, and a farm inside; one of those most ancient holdings of the South and East Counts, still to be distinguished, by their huge banks and dikes full of hedgerow timber, from the more modern corn-lands outside, which were in Hereward’s time mostly common pasture-lands.
“This should be Azerdun,” said he; “and there inside, as I live, stands Azer getting in his crops. But who has he with him?”
With the old man were some half-dozen men of his own rank; some helping the serfs with might and main; one or two standing on the top of the banks, as if on the lookout; but all armed _cap-à-pie_.
“His friends are helping him to get them in,” quoth Martin, “for fear of the rascally Normans. A pleasant and peaceable country we have come back to.”
“And a very strong fortress are they holding,” said Hereward, “against either Norman horsemen or Norman arrows. How to dislodge those six fellows without six times their number, I do not see. It is well to recollect that.”
And so he did; and turned to use again and again, in after years, the strategetic capabilities of an old-fashioned English farm.
Hereward spurred his horse up to the nearest gate, and was instantly confronted by a little fair-haired man, as broad as he was tall, who heaved up a long “twybill,” or double axe, and bade him, across the gate, go to a certain place.
“Little Winter, little Winter, my chuck, my darling, my mad fellow, my brother-in-arms, my brother in robbery and murder, are you grown so honest in your old age that you will not know Hereward the wolf’s-head?”