We must make good
our post, and let them dislodge us if they may."
The two parties were now near enough to parley; and the sheriff
and the knight, advancing in the front of the cavalcade,
called on the lady, the friar, young Gamwell, and the foresters,
to deliver up that false-traitor, Robert, formerly Earl
of Huntingdon. Robert himself made answer by letting fly
an arrow that struck the ground between the fore feet of
the sheriff's horse. The horse reared up from the whizzing,
and lodged the sheriff in the dust; and, at the same time,
the fair Matilda favoured the knight with an arrow in his
right arm, that compelled him to withdraw from the affray.
His men lifted the sheriff carefully up, and replaced him on
his horse, whom he immediately with great rage and zeal urged
on to the assault with his fifty men at his heels, some of whom
were intercepted in their advance by the arrows of the foresters
and Matilda; while the friar, with an eight-foot staff,
dislodged the sheriff a second time, and laid on him with all
the vigour of the church militant on earth, in spite of his
ejaculations of "Hey, friar Michael! What means this, honest friar?
Hold, ghostly friar! Hold, holy friar!"--till Matilda interposed,
and delivered the battered sheriff to the care of the foresters.
The friar continued flourishing his staff among the sheriff's men,
knocking down one, breaking the ribs of another, dislocating
the shoulder of a third, flattening the nose of a fourth,
cracking the skull of a fifth, and pitching a sixth into the river,
till the few, who were lucky enough to escape with whole bones,
clapped spurs to their horses and fled for their lives,
under a farewell volley of arrows.
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