Forty men of us put on harness and followed in the track of John-à-Blount when he had been gone some short time. Sir Alain would have willed the lord abbat to tarry in the house with Arthur, but the abbat would on no account be left out of the adventure, saying, that his presence and exhortations might spare unnecessary bloodshed; yet while he was saying the words he was feeling the point of his lance, and he took with him his heavy battle mace. We all journeyed on foot, for war horses would be but an incumbrance at Sir Ingelric's castle, and by neighing or making other noise they might spoil our ambuscade on the road. That road was a very rough one, and the night continued rather dark; hence divers of us stumbled, and fell more than once: nevertheless we kept up a good pace, and in little more than an hour came to a wooded hollow, about midway between Pangbourne and Speen, through which the robbers must pass on the way from their castle to our manor-house. The trees were all leafless and bare; but the trunks of the ancient oaks were thick, and so every man of us got him behind an oak, twenty on this side the narrow road and twenty on that, and there we all stood concealed from view, and silent as grave stones. I, Felix, had a bad catarrh, yet did I neither cough nor sneeze all the while I was there, for I had prayed unto the saint that hath controul over coughs and colds. For a space that seemed to us very long we heard no sound, and in that wooded hollow and night-darkness we could see but a very little way. I began to think that the good strategem had miscarried, and to moan inwardly for John-à-Blount as a murthered man. But at last we heard, not voices, for the ungodly Philistines were as silent as we, but the heavy tread of footsteps on the broad heath, just above the hollow; and these sounds rapidly came nearer; and then, by peeping round the bole of my covering tree, I did faintly discern a score or more of dark figures descending in loose and careless array into the hollow. As we had been bidden, we all stood stock still until the robbers were at the bottom of the hollow, and between us; but so soon as they were there as in a trap, Sir Alain shouted "Now for the onslaught in the name of King Stephen!" and our abbat shouted "Down, traitors, down!" and the valorous Lord of Caversham and our not less valorous lord abbat, and every man of us, from this side of the pathway and from that, sprung from behind the trees and hemmed in the evil-doers; and in less time than I can say it the heavy mace of our lord abbat laid two of the robbers on the earth with bleeding pates, and Sir Alain's lance went through the body of one that seemed the leader, and pinned him to the very oak behind which I had been standing. The rest, after making vain effort to retreat the way they had come, laid down their arms and cried piteously for quarter and for that mercy which they had never shown to other men. There were a