Soon a group came along the drove which promised fresh sport to the man-hunters: but as the foremost person came up, Ivo stopped in wonder at the shout of,-- “Ivo! Ivo Taillebois! Halt and have a care! The English are risen, and we are all dead men!” The words were spoken in French; and in French Ivo answered, laughing,-- “Thou art not a dead man yet it seems, Sir Robert; art going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, that thou comest in this fashion? Or dost mean to return to Anjou as bare as thou camest out of it?” For Sir Robert had, like Edgar in Shakespear’s _Lear_, “reserved himself a blanket, else had we all been shamed.” But very little more did either he, his lady, and his three children wear, as they trudged along the drove, in even poorer case than that Robert of Coningsby, Who came out of Normandy, With his wife Tiffany, And his maid Maupas, And his dog Hardigras. “For the love of heaven and all chivalry, joke me no jokes, Sir Ivo, but give me and mine clothes and food! The barbarians rose on us last night,--with Azer, the ruffian who owned my lands, at their head, and drove us out into the night as we are, bidding us carry the news to you, for your turn would come next. There are forty or more of them in West Deeping now, and coming eastward, they say, to visit you, and, what is more than all, Hereward is come again.” “Hereward?” cried Ivo, who knew that name well. Whereon Sir Robert told him the terrible tragedy of Bourne. “Mount the lady on a horse, and wrap her in my cloak. Get that dead villain’s clothes for Sir Robert as we go back. Put your horses’ heads about and ride for Spalding.” “What shall we do with the lass?” “We cannot be burdened with the jade. She has cost us two good horses already. Leave her in the road, bound as she is, and let us see if St. Guthlac her master will come and untie her.” So they rode back. Coming from Deeping two hours after, Azer and his men found the girl on the road, dead. “Another count in the long score,” quoth Azer. But when, in two hours more, they came to Spalding town, they found all the folk upon the street, shouting and praising the host of Heaven. There was not a Frenchman left in the town. For when Ivo returned home, ere yet Sir Robert and his family were well clothed and fed, there galloped into Spalding from, the north Sir Ascelin, nephew and man of Thorold, would-be Abbot of Peterborough, and one of the garrison of Lincoln, which was then held by Hereward’s old friend, Gilbert of Ghent. “Not bad news, I hope,” cried Ivo, as Ascelin clanked into the hall. “We have enough of our own. Here is all Kesteven, as the barbarians call it, risen, and they are murdering us right and left.” “Worse news than that, Ivo Taillebois,” (“Sir,” or “Sieur,” Ascelin was loath to call him, being himself a man of family and fashion; and holding the _nouveaux venus_ in deep contempt,)--“worse news than that: the North has risen again, and proclaimed Prince Edgar King.”