Yet was not the feast so gay as might have been. Will Green had me to
sit next to him, and on the other side sat John Ball; but the priest
had grown somewhat distraught, and sat as one thinking of somewhat
that was like to escape his thought. Will Green looked at his
daughter from time to time, and whiles his eyes glanced round the fair
chamber as one who loved it, and his kind face grew sad, yet never
sullen. When the herdsmen came into the hall they fell straightway to
asking questions concerning those of the Fellowship who had been slain
in the fray, and of their wives and children; so that for a while
thereafter no man cared to jest, for they were a neighbourly and kind
folk, and were sorry both for the dead, and also for the living that
should suffer from that day's work.
So then we sat silent awhile. The unseen moon was bright over the
roof of the house, so that outside all was gleaming bright save the
black shadows, though the moon came not into the room, and the white
wall of the tower was the whitest and the brightest thing we could
see.
Wide open were the windows, and the scents of the fragrant night
floated in upon us, and the sounds of the men at their meat or making
merry about the township; and whiles we heard the gibber of an owl
from the trees westward of the church, and the sharp cry of a
blackbird made fearful by the prowling stoat, or the far-off lowing of
a cow from the upland pastures; or the hoofs of a horse trotting on
the pilgrimage road (and one of our watchers would that be).
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