"They can travel, too, with bag of meal and
gridiron slung to their sword-belt, so that it is ill to follow
them. There are scant crops and few beeves in the borderland,
where a man must reap his grain with sickle in one fist and brown
bill in the other. On the other hand, they are the sorriest
archers that I have ever seen, and cannot so much as aim with the
arbalest, to say nought of the long-bow. Again, they are mostly
poor folk, even the nobles among them, so that there are few who
can buy as good a brigandine of chain-mail as that which I am
wearing, and it is ill for them to stand up against our own
knights, who carry the price of five Scotch farms upon their
chest and shoulders. Man for man, with equal weapons, they are
as worthy and valiant men as could be found in the whole of
Christendom."
"And the French?" asked Alleyne, to whom the archer's light
gossip had all the relish that the words of the man of action
have for the recluse.
"The French are also very worthy men. We have had great good
fortune in France, and it hath led to much bobance and camp-fire
talk, but I have ever noticed that those who know the most have
the least to say about it.
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