anywhere near the head with all their efforts; while these men seem to do
so with the greatest ease, and the speed with which they can shoot off
arrow after arrow well-nigh passes belief. That tall fellow, who is their
chief, but now sent twenty arrows into a space no greater than a hand's-
breadth, at a hundred and twenty yards, and that so quickly that he scarce
seemed to take time to aim at all, and the others are well-nigh as
skilful. Yesterday I put up a breastplate such as is worn by our men-at-
arms and asked them to shoot at it at eighty yards. They fired a volley
together at it. It was riddled like a colander; not one of the five-and-
twenty arrows had failed to pierce it."

"Ay, at that distance, Captain, an English archer of fair skill could not
miss it, and it needs Milan armour, and that of the best, to keep out
their arrows."

"By our Lady," the captain remarked, "I should be sorry to attack a castle
defended by them, and our lord has done well indeed to bring them over
with him. Your men-at-arms are stalwart fellows. My own men feel well-nigh
abashed when they see how these men take up a stone that they themselves
can with difficulty lift from the ground, and hurl it twenty yards away;
and they whirl their heavy axes round their heads as if they were reeds."

"They are all picked men," Guy said with a laugh. "You must not take it
that all Englishmen are of equal strength, though no doubt Sir Eustace
could have gathered five hundred as strong had he wished it."

"If that be so," the captain said, "I can well believe that if France and
England meet again on a field of battle France shall be beaten as she was
before. However, there is one comfort, we shall not be among the defeated;
for our lord, and his father and his grandfather before, him, have ever