A pretty lass came along the drove, driving a few sheep before her, and
spinning as she walked.
"Whose lass are you?" shouted Ivo.
"The Abbot of Crowland's, please your lordship," said she, trembling.
"Much too pretty to belong to monks. Chuck her up behind you, one of you."
The shrieking and struggling girl was mounted behind a horseman and bound,
and Ivo rode on.
A woman ran out of a turf-hut on the drove side, attracted by the girl's
cries. It was her mother.
"My lass! Give me my lass, for the love of St. Mary and all saints!" and
she clung to Ivo's bridle.
He struck her down, and rode on over her.
A man cutting sedges in a punt in the lode alongside looked up at the
girl's shrieks, and leapt on shore, scythe in hand.
"Father! father!" cried she.
"I'll rid thee, lass, or die for it," said he, as he sprang up the
drove-dike and swept right and left at the horses' legs.
The men recoiled. One horse went down, lamed for life; another staggered
backwards into the further lode, and was drowned. But an arrow went
through the brave serf's heart, and Ivo rode on, cursing more bitterly
than ever, and comforted himself by flying his hawks at a covey of
patridges.
Soon a group came along the drove which promised fresh sport to the
man-hunters: but as the foremost person came up, Ivo stopped in wonder at
the shout of,--
"Ivo! Ivo Taillebois! Halt and have a care! The English are risen, and we
are all dead men!"
The words were spoken in French; and in French Ivo answered, laughing,--
"Thou art not a dead man yet it seems, Sir Robert; art going on pilgrimage
to Jerusalem, that thou comest in this fashion? Or dost mean to return to
Anjou as bare as thou camest out of it?"
For Sir Robert had, like Edgar in Shakespear's _Lear_, "reserved
himself a blanket, else had we all been shamed.
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