"Ho! YE PEOPLE! what will ye gathering in arms? Wot ye not that ye
are doing or shall do great harm, loss, and hurt to the king's
lieges----"

He stopped; Jack Straw's hand was lowered for the second time. He
looked to his men right and left, and then turned rein and turned
tail, and scuttled back to the main body at his swiftest. Huge
laughter rattled out all along our line as Jack Straw climbed back
into the orchard grinning also.

Then we noted more movement in the enemy's line. They were spreading
the archers and arbalestiers to our left, and the men-at-arms and
others also spread some, what under the three pennons of which Long
Gregory had told us, and which were plain enough to us in the dear
evening. Presently the moving line faced us, and the archers set off
at a smart pace toward us, the men-at-arms holding back a little
behind them. I knew now that they had been within bowshot all along,
but our men were loth to shoot before their first shots would tell,
like those half-dozen in the road when, as they told me afterwards, a
plump of their men-at-arms had made a show of falling on.

But now as soon as those men began to move on us directly in face,
Jack Straw put his horn to his lips and blew a loud rough blast that
was echoed by five or six others along the orchard hedge. Every man
had his shaft nocked on the string; I watched them, and Will Green
specially; he and his bow and its string seemed all of a piece, so
easily by seeming did he draw the nock of the arrow to his ear. A
moment, as he took his aim, and then--O then did I understand the
meaning of the awe with which the ancient poet speaks of the loose of