The speakers were a man and woman, who were standing looking on at a party
of men practising at the butts on the village green at Summerley, one of
the hamlets on the estates of Sir Eustace de Villeroy, in Hampshire.

"Well shot!" the man exclaimed, as an archer pierced a white wand at a
distance of eighty yards. "They are good shots all, and if our lord and
lady have fears of troubles in France, they do right well in taking a band
of rare archers with them. There are but five-and-twenty of them, but they
are all of the best. When they offered prizes here a month since for the
bowmen of Hants and Sussex and Dorset, methought they had some good reason
why they should give such high prizes as to bring hither the best men from
all three counties, and we were all proud that four of our own men should
have held their own so well in such company, and especially that Tom, the
miller's son, should have beaten the best of them. He is captain of the
band, you know, but almost all the others shoot nigh as well; there is not
one of them who cannot send an arrow straight into the face of a foe at a
hundred and twenty yards. There were some others as good who would fain
have been of the party, but our lady said she would take no married men,
and she was right. They go for five years certain, and methinks a man
fights all the better when he knows there is no one in England praying for
his return, and that if he falls, there is no widow or children to bewail
his loss. There are as many stout men-at-arms going too; so the Castle of
Villeroy will be a hard nut for anyone to crack, for I hear they can put a
hundred and fifty of their vassals there in the field."

"We shall miss Sir Aylmer's son Guy," the woman said; "he is ever down at
the village green when there are sports going on. There is not one of his
age who can send an arrow so straight to the mark, and not many of the
men; and he can hold his own with a quarter-staff too."