of sight ere the new comers were urging their panting, foaming horses up the slope which had been the scene of that long-drawn and bloody fight.
And a fearsome sight it was that met their eyes! Across the lower end lay the dense heap of men and horses where the first arrowstorm had burst. Above, the bodies of the dead and the dying—French, Spanish, and Aragonese—lay thick and thicker, until they covered the whole ground two and three deep in one dreadful tangle of slaughter. Above them lay the Englishmen in their lines, even as they had stood, and higher yet upon the plateau, a wild medley of the dead of all nations, where the last deadly grapple had left them. In the further corner, under the shadow of a great rock, there crouched seven bowmen, with great John in the centre of them—all wounded, weary, and in sorry case, but still unconquered, with their blood-stained weapons waving and their voices ringing a welcome to their countrymen. Alleyne rode across to John, while Sir Hugh Calverley followed close behind him.
'By Saint George!' cried Sir Hugh, 'I have never seen signs of so stern a fight, and I am right glad that we have been in time to save you.'
'You have saved more than us,' said John, pointing to the banner which leaned against the rock behind him.
'You have done nobly,' cried the old Free Companion, gazing with a soldier's admiration at the huge frame and bold face of the archer. 'But why is it, my good fellow, that you sit upon this man?'
'By the rood! I had forgot him,' John answered, rising and dragging from under him no less a person than the Spanish caballero, Don Diego Alvarez. 'This man, my fair lord, means to me a new house, ten cows, one bull—if it be but a little one—a grindstone, and I know not what beside; so that I thought it well to sit upon him, lest he should take a fancy to leave me.'
'Tell me, John,' cried Alleyne, faintly, 'where is my dear lord, Sir Nigel Loring?'
