He pulled his beard, and looked at her with half-closed eyes, convinced that he was a devil of a fellow, and ready to challenge her to pose him with her questions. And for once his swagger had a fierce reality behind it. Even his boasting seemed to fall short of the truth. “No doubt you will be a great captain,” she said; “and, my God, what a country it will be to live in!” “We honest fellows are as good, and better, than the fops and squirelings.” “Better—oh, far better.” She spoke half in a whisper, and with an irony that went over his head. “When are we to be in London, great captain?” “In three days.” “So soon?” “We want to be in, and to have the glory, and some of the pickings, before the easterlings and the midlanders come up.” “To be sure.” She smiled at him as she might have smiled at some extravagantly bitter jest. He leant over the tailboard, and his eyes leered. “Isoult, you shall be a great lady.” “I shall be nothing, my friend, just nothing.” “Wait till some of us have our castles and our lands.” “What, some of you mean to be lords in the places of—these gentlemen?” He gave an inimitable shrug of the shoulders. “Bah! these sheep! One must let them bleat. But the shepherds know whither they are going.” She rested her chin on her hands and stared at him till he began to blink. “You are not such a fool, then, lord Guy! You have caught the twist of Merlin’s tongue. Oh, these honest firebrands! Always the sheep—always the sheep!” She saw the sun go down behind the swashbuckler’s head, so that it haloed him and the red tusks of his hair that stuck out so jauntily. He frothed for a while and then took himself off, kissing the blade of his sword to her as though he were to carry her favour in the lists. Isoult smiled bitterly, glimpsing her own helplessness. “To have to listen to such a jay! Where is the hawk that should tear the heart out of such creatures? Friend Fulk, if you were King—ah, things might happen!” Dusk fell, and the heath became one great uproar, a kind of huge playing field for all these rough men of the fields. They sang and hooted and hammered on pots and pans, danced, wrestled, rolled over each other, played leap-frog, giving each other huge smacks and buffets. All their elemental grossness seemed minded to express itself in an orgy of physical delirium. They mocked Nature, and made a jest of her, and the close June night was full of the sound of their horse-play.