deep ditch. It would be late ere we reached the town, gates would scarce
open for us, we could not fee the warders, houses would be shut and dark;
the King's archers were apt to bear them unfriendly to wandering men with
the devil dancing in their pouches. Resource we saw none; if there was a
cottage, dogs, like wolves for hunger and fierceness, were baying round
it. As for Brother Thomas, an evil bruit had gone before us concerning a
cordelier that the fowls and geese were fain to follow, as wilder things,
they say, follow the blessed St. Francis. So there sat Brother Thomas at
the cross-roads, footsore, hungry, and sullen, in the midst of us, who
dared not speak, he twanging at the string of his arbalest. He called
himself our Moses, in his blasphemous way, and the blind man having
girded at him for not leading us into the land of plenty, he had struck
the man till he bled, and now stood stanching his wound.

Suddenly Brother Thomas ceased from his twanging, and holding up his hand
for silence, leaned his ear to the ground. The night was still, though a
cold wind came very stealthily from the east.

"Horses!" he said.

"It is but the noise of the brook by the way," said the blind man,
sullenly.

Brother Thomas listened again.

"No, it is horses," he whispered. "My men, they that ride horses can
spare somewhat out of their abundance to feed the poor." And with that
he began winding up his arbalest hastily. "Aymeric," he said to one of
our afflicted company, "you draw a good bow for a blind man; hide
yourself in the opposite ditch, and be ready when I give the word 'Pax