If these
be broken, then all men know that it is time to buy arrow-heads."
"Aye, but the men of the law are strong in France as well as the
men of war. By my hilt! I hold that a man has more to fear there
from the ink-pot of the one than from the iron of the other.
There is ever some cursed sheepskin in their strong boxes to
prove that the rich man should be richer and the poor man poorer.
It would scarce pass in England, but they are quiet folk over the
water."
"And what other nations have you seen in your travels, good sir?"
asked Alleyne Edricson. His young mind hungered for plain facts
of life, after the long course of speculation and of mysticism on
which he had been trained.
"I have seen the low countryman in arms, and I have nought to say
against him. Heavy and slow is he by nature, and is not to be brought
into battle for the sake of a lady's eyelash or the twang of a
minstrel's string, like the hotter blood of the south. But ma foi!
lay hand on his wool-bales, or trifle with his velvet of Bruges, and
out buzzes every stout burgher, like bees from the tee-hole, ready to
lay on as though it were his one business in life.
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