tucked into a broad leathern belt, leaving bare the leggings, which
showed limbs of great bulk and sinew, and which were stained by the
dust and mire of travel. The first mentioned was slight and small of
person; the last was of the height and port of the sons of Anak. The
countenance of neither could be perceived, for both had let fall the
hood, worn by civilians as by priests out of doors, more than half way
over their faces.

A murmur of great surprise, disdain, and resentment, at the intrusion
of strangers so attired circulated round the neighbourhood in which
they had been placed, checked for a moment by a certain air of respect
which the officer had shown towards both, but especially the taller;
but breaking out with greater vivacity from the faint restraint, as
the tall man unceremoniously stretched across the board, drew towards
himself an immense flagon, which (agreeably to the custom of arranging
the feast in "messes" of four) had been specially appropriated to Ulf
the Dane, Godrith the Saxon, and two young Norman knights akin to the
puissant Lord of Grantmesnil,--and having offered it to his comrade,
who shook his head, drained it with a gusto that seemed to bespeak him
at least no Norman, and wiped his lips boorishly with the sleeve of
his huge arm.

"Dainty sir," said one of those Norman knights, William Mallet, of the
house of Mallet de Graville [54], as he moved as far from the gigantic
intruder as the space on the settle would permit, "forgive the
observation that you have damaged my mantle, you have grazed my foot,
and you have drunk my wine. And vouchsafe, if it so please you, the
face of the man who hath done this triple wrong to William Mallet de
Graville."