In the great hall at Harby a motley fellowship were assembled. If a stranger from a strange land, wafted thither on some winged Arabian carpet or flying horse of ebony, could have beheld the place and the company, he would have been hard put to it to find any reasonable explanation of what his eyes witnessed. In the middle of the hall some five singular figures stood on line: two tall, powerful lads with foolish faces, flagrant farm-hands; an old, bowed man with the snow of many winters on his hair; an impish lad who might have welcomed fourteen springs; and, finally, a rubicund, buxom woman with very red cheeks, very blue eyes, very brown hair, whose person suggested the kitchen a league off. Each of these persons handled a pike, carrying it at an angle different from that of the others, and each of them gazed with painfully attentive stare at the oaken table near the hearth upon which Hercules Halfman sat learnedly expounding the mysteries of the pike drill, while Thoroughgood stood between him and the awkward squad to illustrate in his own person and with the pike he carried the teachings of the instructor. "Order your pikes," Halfman commanded. "Advance your pikes. Shoulder your pikes." Then, as these orders were obeyed deftly enough by Thoroughgood and with bewildering variety by the others, he continued, "Trail your pikes," and then broke sharply off to expostulate with one of the farm-hands. "Now, Timothy Garlinge, call you that trailing of a pike. Why, Gammer Satchell carries herself more soldierly." Timothy Garlinge grinned loutishly at this rebuke, but the fat dame whom Halfman's flourish indicated seemed to dilate with satisfaction. "It were shame," she chuckled, "if a handy lass could not better a lobbish lad." The impish lad grinned derision. "Ay," he commented; "but an old fool's best at her spits and griddles." A most unmilitary titter rippled along the rank but broke upon the rock of Mrs. Satchell's anger. It might have seemed to many that it were impossible for the dame's cheeks to be any redder, but Mistress Satchell's visage showed that nature could still work miracles. With face a rich crimson from chin to forehead, she made to hurl herself upon the leering, fleering mannikin, but was caught in the unbreakable restraint of neighbor Clupp's clasp. "You limb, I'll griddle you!" Mistress Satchell gasped, panting in the embracing arms. Halfman played the peace-maker with a sour smile. "There, there, goody," he expostulated; "youth will have its yelp." He turned with something of a yawn to Thoroughgood. "Why a devil did you press gossip cook into the service?" Thoroughgood shook his head protestingly. "Nay, the virago volunteered," he explained, with a look that seemed to supplement speech in the suggestion that it were best to let Mistress Satchell have her own way. This was evidently Mistress Satchell's own view of the matter.