In the mean time all the good people of the township were forewarned, and called to the manor-house. The aged, with the women and children, were to stay within those strong walls; but all the rest were armed, and kept in readiness to sally forth. Of the sixty merry men that had stolen the march upon Torauld and got to Peterborough before him, some had been left at Crowland and some at Spalding, and some had taken up their long stilts and had walked across the bogs to see their kindred and friends in Hoilandia. Only one score and ten of these tried soldiers remained; the good men of the township of Brunn that put on harness and were ready to fight, made more than another score; and besides these there was about half a score of hardy hinds who had followed the Ladie Alftrude from her home. As it grew dark the scouts reported that the Normans were in motion, and that they were moving in two separate bodies, even as Elfric reported they would do. Then the Lord of Brunn went himself to watch their movements. He made out, more by his ears than by his eyes, that one body was coming straight on for the wood and the house, and that the other body was turning round the wood by a path which would bring them to a little bridge near the edge of the wood, this bridge being between the township and the manor-house. By his own prudent order lights had been left burning in one or two of the better sort of houses, and the whole town thus looked as it usually did at that hour; while bright lights beamed from every window of the manor-house, to make Ivo Taille-Bois believe that the Lord of Brunn was feasting and carousing and wholly off his guard. “Thus far, well!” thought Hereward, as he ran back to the house. “It will take these heavy Normans a good length of time to cross the stream and get into the wood; and while Ivo is coming into the wood on the one side, I will go out of it on the other side, and catch this bully monk and his people as in a trap. And Taille-Bois shall rue the day that he turned his face towards Brunn.”