The ways were rude and long from Bordeaux town to Orleans, whither I had
set my face, not knowing, when I left my own country, that the city was
beleaguered by the English. For who could guess that lords and knights
of the Christian faith, holding captive the gentle Duke of Orleans, would
besiege his own city?--a thing unheard of among the very Saracens, and a
deed that God punished. Yet the news of this great villainy, namely, the
leaguer of Orleans, then newly begun, reached my ears on my landing at
Bordeaux, and made me greatly fear that I might never meet my brother
Robin alive. And this my doubt proved but too true, for he soon after
this time fell, with many other Scottish gentlemen and archers, deserted
shamefully by the French and by Charles de Bourbon, Comte de Clermont, at
the Battle of the Herrings. But of this I knew nothing--as, indeed, the
battle was not yet fought--and only pushed on for France, thinking to
take service with the Dauphin against the English. My journey was
through a country ruinous enough, for, though the English were on the
further bank of the Loire, the partisans of the Dauphin had made a ruin
round themselves and their holds, and, not being paid, they lived upon
the country.

The further north I held, by ways broken and ruined with rains and suns,
the more bare and rugged grew the whole land. Once, stopping hard by a
hamlet, I had sat down to munch such food as I carried, and was sharing
my meal with a little brown herd-boy, who told me that he was dinnerless.
A few sheep and lean kine plucked at such scant grasses as grew among
rocks, and herbs useless but sweet-scented, when suddenly a horn was
blown from the tower of the little church. The first note of that blast
had not died away, when every cow and sheep was scampering towards the
hamlet and a kind of "barmkyn" {4} they had builded there for protection,