Hereward rose, thanked him, and then hurried out in silence.
"You will pray your very loudest, Priest," said Martin, as he followed his
young lord.
"I will, I will," quoth he, and kneeling down began to chant that noble
seventy-third Psalm, "Quam bonus Israel," which he had just so fitly
quoted.
"Thou gavest him the bag, Martin?" said Hereward, as they hurried on.
"You are not dead yet. 'No pay, no play,' is as good a rule for priest as
for layman."
"Now then, Martin Lightfoot, good-bye. Come not with me. It must never be
said, even slanderously, that I brought two into the field against one;
and if I die, Martin--"
"You won't die!" said Lightfoot, shutting his teeth.
"If I die, go back to my people somehow, and tell them that I died like a
true earl's son."
Hereward held out his hand; Martin fell on his knees and kissed it;
watched him with set teeth till he disappeared in the wood; and then
started forward and entered the bushes at a different spot.
"I must be nigh at hand to see fair play," he muttered to himself, "in
case any of his ruffians be hanging about. Fair play I'll see, and fair
play I'll give, too, for the sake of my lord's honor, though I be bitterly
loath to do it. So many times as I have been a villain when it was of no
use, why mayn't I be one now, when it would serve the purpose indeed? Why
did we ever come into this accursed place? But one thing I will do," said
he, as he ensconced himself under a thick holly, whence he could see the
meeting of the combatants upon an open lawn some twenty yards away; "if
that big bull-calf kills my master, and I do not jump on his back and pick
his brains out with this trusty steel of mine, may my right arm--"
And Martin Lightfoot swore a fearful oath, which need not here be written.
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