The housecarles rushed in on Hereward, who had enough to do to keep them
at arm's length by long sweeps of his sword.
Alef entreated, threatened, promised a fair trial if the men would give
fair play; when, to complete the confusion, the Princess threw herself
upon the corpse, shrieking and tearing her hair; and to Hereward's
surprise and disgust, bewailed the prowess and the virtues of the dead,
calling upon all present to avenge his murder.
Hereward vowed inwardly that he would never again trust woman's fancy or
fight in woman's quarrel. He was now nigh at his wits' end; the
housecarles had closed round him in a ring with the intention of seizing
him; and however well he might defend his front, he might be crippled at
any moment from behind: but in the very nick of time Martin Lightfoot
burst through the crowd, set himself heel to heel with his master, and
broke out, not with threats, but with a good-humored laugh.
"Here is a pretty coil about a red-headed brute of a Pict! Danes, Ostmen,"
he cried, "are you not ashamed to call such a fellow your lord, when you
have such a true earl's son as this to lead you if you will?"
The Ostmen in the company looked at each other. Martin Lightfoot saw that
his appeal to the antipathies of race had told, and followed it up by a
string of witticisms upon the Pictish nation in general, of which the only
two fit for modern ears to be set down were the two old stories, that the
Picts had feet so large that they used to lie upon their backs and hold up
their legs to shelter them from the sun; and that when killed, they could
not fall down, but died as they were, all standing.
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