huddling and shuffling towards their horses; but some cast down their
weapons and threw up their hands and cried for peace and ransom; and
some stood and fought desperately, and slew some till they were
hammered down by many strokes, and of these were the bailiffs and
tipstaves, and the lawyers and their men, who could not run and hoped
for no mercy.

I looked as on a picture and wondered, and my mind was at strain to
remember something forgotten, which yet had left its mark on it. I
heard the noise of the horse-hoofs of the fleeing men-at-arms (the
archers and arbalestiers had scattered before the last minutes of the
play), I heard the confused sound of laughter and rejoicing down in
the meadow, and close by me the evening wind lifting the lighter twigs
of the trees, and far away the many noises of the quiet country, till
light and sound both began to fade from me and I saw and heard
nothing.

I leapt up to my feet presently and there was Will Green before me as
I had first seen him in the street with coat and hood and the gear at
his girdle and his unstrung bow in his hand; his face smiling and kind
again, but maybe a thought sad.

"Well," quoth I, "what is the tale for the ballad-maker?"

"As Jack Straw said it would be," said he, "'the end of the day and
the end of the fray;'" and he pointed to the brave show of the sky
over the sunken sun; "the knights fled and the sheriff dead: two of
the lawyer kind slain afield, and one hanged: and cruel was he to make
them cruel: and three bailiffs knocked on the head--stout men, and so
witless, that none found their brains in their skulls; and five