"The heron! the heron!" shouted the English.
"Follow him, men, heron or hawk!" shouted Ivo, galloping his horse up to
the ditch, and stopping short at fifteen feet of water.
"Shoot, some one! Where are the bows gone?"
The heron was gone two hundred yards, running, in spite of his pole, at a
wonderful pace, before a bow could be brought to bear. He seemed to expect
an arrow; for he stopped, glanced his eye round, threw himself flat on his
face, with his shield, not over his body, but over his bare legs; sprang
up as the shaft stuck in the ground beside him, ran on, planted his pole
in the next dike, and flew over it.
In a few minutes he was beyond pursuit; and Ivo turned, breathless with
rage, to ask who he was.
"Alas, sir! he is the man who set free the four men at Wrokesham Bridge
last night."
"Set free! Are they not hanged and dead?"
"We--we dared not tell you. But he came upon us--"
"Single-handed, you cowards?"
"Sir, he is not a man, but a witch or a devil. He asked us what we did
there. One of our men laughed at his long neck and legs, and called him
heron. 'Heron I am,' says he, 'and strike like a heron, right at the
eyes'; and with that he cuts the man over the face with his axe, and laid
him dead, and then another, and another.'
"Till you all ran away, villains!"
"We gave back a step,--no more.
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