the ax, whom I have seen already this day. There are also those
who tear, destroy or scatter the papers of the law, of which this
young man is the chief. Therefore, I would rede you, dame, not to
rail against us, but to understand that we are the King's men on
the King's own service."

"What then is your errand in this house at this hour of the
night?"

The summoner cleared his throat pompously, and turning his
parchment to the light of the cressets he read out a long document
in Norman-French, couched in such a style and such a language that
the most involved and foolish of our forms were simplicity itself
compared to those by which the men of the long gown made a mystery
of that which of all things on earth should be the plainest and
the most simple. Despair fell cold upon Nigel's heart and
blanched the face of the old dame as they listened to the dread
catalogue of claims and suits and issues, questions of peccary and
turbary, of house-bote and fire-bote, which ended by a demand for
all the lands, hereditaments, tenements, messuages and curtilages,
which made up their worldly all.

Nigel, still bound, had been placed with his back against the iron
coffer, whence he heard with dry lips and moist brow this doom of
his house. Now he broke in on the recital with a vehemence which
made the summoner jump:

"You shall rue what you have done this night!" he cried. "Poor as
we are, we have our friends who will not see us wronged, and I
will plead my cause before the King's own majesty at Windsor, that