"
So Ivo Taillebois summoned all his men, and all other men's men who would
join him, and rode forth through Spalding and Bourne, having announced to
Lucia his bride that he was going to slay her one remaining relative; and
when she wept, cursed and kicked her, as he did once a week. After which
he came to Thorold of Peterborough.
So on the two worthies rode from Peterborough to Stamford, and from
Stamford into the wilderness, no man knows whither.
"And far they rode by bush and shaugh,
And far by moss and mire,"--
but never found a track of Hereward or his men. And Ivo Taillebois left
off boasting how he would burn Torfrida over a slow fire, and confined
himself to cursing; and Abbot Thorold left off warbling the song of Roland
as if he had been going to a second battle of Hastings, and wished himself
in warm bed at Peterborough.
But at the last they struck upon a great horse-track, and followed it at
their best pace for several miles, and yet no sign of Hereward.
"Catch an Englishman," quoth the abbot.
But that was not so easy. The poor folk had hidden themselves, like Israel
of old, in thickets and dens and caves of rocks, at the far-off sight of
the Norman tyrants, and not a living soul had appeared for twenty miles.
At last they caught a ragged wretch herding swine, and haled him up to
Ivo.
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