Fulk took his bow and a couple of arrows from the table and passed out again into the porch. The man in brown had disappeared from the edge of the oak wood, and in his place stood a figure in a grey frock and hood, the figure of a grey friar, still as a stone figure in a niche over a church door. Fulk fingered his chin. “So you are there, my friend. God’s mercy, but I have been bidden to wait for you, and I will wait with a naked sword. Let us see whether any ditch-mender will dare to put a foot over this threshold.” Passing swiftly from place to place, he closed and fastened every door and shutter, but left the porch door open. Brown dusk was falling, and the rafters of the hall were lost in gloom. Fulk kicked up the fire, threw on half a faggot and some logs, and the flare of the flames as they blazed up were reflected in his eyes. A ringed coat and an open basinet hung on a peg above the dais, with a plain black shield and a sword in a blue scabbard. Fulk stood listening a moment before taking down the hauberk. He slipped it on, donned the basinet, and began to fasten the laces to the rings of the chain gorget. The fire had blazed up brightly, and, taking the shield and sword, Fulk drew a stool near to the hearth and sat down to watch and wait. He unsheathed the sword and laid it across his knees. There was no sound that he could hear other than the crackling of the burning wood or the scattering of sparks as a log fell. He saw a rat come out of a hole in the wainscoting and go gliding along the wall. His eyes were fated to serve him sooner than his ears, for he had left the heavy oak door wide open, and in the dark streak between the hinge post and the edge of the door he saw something that glistened. It was the white of a man’s eye peering through the crack, and looking straight at him as he sat beside the fire. Fulk’s muscles tightened. “Hallo, my friend! I see you.” His voice was sharp and ringing as the stroke of a dagger upon steel. The glistening eye melted back into the shadows, and he heard whispering voices and a scuffling of feet. There were some twenty men in the courtyard, bunched together like hounds who have come to the mouth of a bear’s cave. One figure took another by the scruff of the neck and thrust it forward, and persuaded it towards the porch at the point of a sword. Fulk heard a man snarl like a dog. Then a mop head came furtively round the edge of the door, red eyes blinking anxiously, as though ready to dodge a blow. The head jerked back again, and Fulk heard the murmur of voices grow louder. One voice topped the others, and the rest grew silent. “Leave it to me, sirs; I know how to handle a vicious colt.”