"
"Yea, forsooth," said the priest, "here will I abide you my fellows if
ye come back; or if ye come not back, here will I abide the foe.
Depart, and the blessing of the Fellowship be with you."
Down then leapt Jack Straw from the cross, and the whole throng set
off without noise or hurry, soberly and steadily in outward seeming.
Will Green led me by the hand as if I were a boy, yet nothing he said,
being forsooth intent on his charge. We were some four hundred men in
all; but I said to myself that without some advantage of the ground we
were lost men before the men-at-arms that long Gregory Tailor had told
us of; for I had not seen as yet the yard-long shaft at its work.
We and somewhat more than half of our band turned into the orchards on
the left of the road, through which the level rays of the low sun
shone brightly. The others took up their position on the right side
of it. We kept pretty near to the road till we had got through all
the closes save the last, where we were brought up by a hedge and a
dyke, beyond which lay a wide-open nearly treeless space, not of
tillage, as at the other side of the place, but of pasture, the common
grazing ground of the township.
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