Moreover, some of them crowded about her, and hot faces were smeary with a gloating thought of her comeliness. She saw the dull lust in their eyes, and her pride became ice. They were like cattle jostling, leaping, bellowing. Now and again the shrill and screaming laughter of a woman eddied up. There was one huge fellow with a purple birth-mark covering half his face, who strode along carrying a small cask as a drum, and beating it with a hammer. He shouted perpetually with the voice of a cow that has been separated from its calf, “Death to all the lords and gentles!” and when he shouted his mouth looked like a red sore. Late in the day they were crossing a lonely valley, where a stream ran between willows and aspens. A mill-house, built of timber and white plaster and thatched with straw, stood in the thick of an orchard about a hundred paces above the ford, and Isoult saw a dozen men break away and make for the mill-house. The fore-hoofs of her horse were, in the water when she heard a woman’s scream, a scream that was smothered instantly as though a big hand had been clapped over the screamer’s mouth. The men near Isoult laughed. “Old Bill o’ Mead Barrel will be first in, I wager you.” She turned her horse sharply, scattered the men, and rode through the grassland along the edge of the stream, and leaving her horse at the gate by the footbridge, crossed over by the planking that passed close to the mill-wheel. There was a little garden of flowers and herbs in front of the house, and from within came the cries of a woman. Isoult’s voice was merciless. “Back, you dogs!” Her right hand was armed, but the men fell away sheepishly from before the steel of her scorn. A woman lay cowering in a corner, and the big fellow with the purple face who had been beating the barrel like a drum was standing over her with a torn piece of cloth in one hand. Isoult beckoned the woman. “Come.” She twisted past the big man, and, half crawling, fled to Isoult’s knees. And the men let her go, standing mute and balked, avoiding each other’s eyes. Isoult pointed the woman over the bridge. “Go; take to the woods. Hide while the wild swine are abroad.” She kissed Isoult’s hand and fled. Isoult waited on the footbridge, but the men hung back in the mill-house, for her scorn had sobered them. Turning to cross the bridge, she found Merlin riding up on his white mule between the willows and aspens. His cowl fell back as he dismounted, and he was showing his teeth like a horse minded to bite. Isoult called to him. “Merlin, are your swine to root as they please?” He made light of it, sneeringly. “Keep away from the sty, Isoult; your nose is too delicate. Things must happen. I will speak to the fools.” As he passed her on the bridge their eyes crossed like swords. “Sing to our hooded falcon to-night, my daughter. It may be that I have softened his heart.” She gave Merlin no answer, but, remounting her horse, rode back slowly towards the ford.