Two troopers in sleeveless coats of plate mail, and heavy greaves and boots, came clanking down the jagged hill-path. They routed with loud halloos the threescore people who dwelt in the foul and toppling huts huddled at the foot of the crag, under the shadow of gray Egswith. "Ho! Ho-o!" they bawled. "Out with you--out! out! Your lord rides to-day!" A bustling crowd arose on the instant. Strong men swarmed in the open. Some were sent into the fields with horns to summon yokels who were grubbing among the roots. Others haled forth armor and saddle-gear, and bows and spears, and shouted joyous quips from group to group. Dull-browed women, with backs bent like beasts of burden, brought food and hoods and such tackle at command, in sulky silence. Half-clad children hung about the doorways, gazing wonderingly. From the castle gates some horses were being led out; and about the high walls rang the shrill blare of trumpet-calls. The two troopers, after setting all in motion outside, clanked their way into the smithy, and the black one, Morgan, he with a brutish face, seamed and gashed with red scars,--where only one eye remained to glare in rude arrogance,--kicked the door open, and cried out as he did so: "Are you dead here, then? What are your ears for, fools? And no fire!" Dickon crossed the floor of the smithy, and stood before the intruders. "The old man will light fires no more," he said, with dogged indifference, pointing a sidelong thumb to the bundle of straw at the tail of the forge, beneath the bellows. There, flat on his back, lay the smith, with wide-open, staring eyes, and a face of greenish-brazen hue; his huge grizzled beard spread stiffly outward like the bristling collar of some unclean giant vulture. "He was ever a surly swine," Morgan growled. "Even as we need him most, he fails us thus!" Dickon offered no opinion upon this. "It fell on him in the night," he said. Morgan leant over as far as his iron casings permitted, to note what share of breath remained in the smith's body. Then he rose, and looked the lad from top to toe with his sullen single eye. "Get you into his foot-gear, then, and follow on," he snarled curtly. Then for the first time the other man-at-arms spoke. He was a huge, reddish warrior, with the shoulders of an ox, and a face which flamed forth from out the casings of his head-piece like a setting winter sun. "Were it not better to leave him?" this Rawly asked. "If he chance to get his head broken, how will Sir Watty make shift for a smith?" Morgan sneered this down. "The lout hath not the wit for the tenth part of a smith," he said. "Between this and Bromfield there are a dozen of the craft to be had at the bare mention of a halter." Thus it was that a soldier's life opened before Dickon.