"Thither will I go," said Locksley. "Disperse and seek your companions. Collect what force you can, for there's game afoot that must be hunted hard and will turn to bay. Meet me here at daybreak. And stay," he added; "I have forgotten what is most necessary of the whole. Two of you take the road quickly toward Torquilstone, the castle of [v]Front-de-Boeuf. A set of gallants, who have been [v]masquerading in such guise as our own, are carrying a band of prisoners thither. Watch them closely, for, even if they reach the castle before we collect our force, our honor is concerned to punish them, and we will find means to do so. Keep a good watch on them, therefore, and despatch one of your comrades to bring the news of the yeomen thereabouts." The men promised obedience and departed on their several errands. Meanwhile, their leader and his two companions, who now looked upon him with great respect as well as some fear, pursued their way to the chapel where dwelt the friar mentioned by Locksley. Presently they reached a little moonlit glade, in front of which stood an ancient and ruinous chapel and beside it a rude hermitage of stone half-covered with ivy vines. The sounds which proceeded at that moment from the latter place were anything but churchly. In fact, the hermit and another voice were performing at the full extent of very powerful lungs an old drinking-song, of which this was the burden: Come, trowl the brown bowl to me, Bully boy, bully boy; Come trowl the brown bowl to me: Ho! jolly Jenkin, I spy a knave drinking; Come trowl the brown bowl to me. "Now, that is not ill sung," said Wamba, who had thrown in a few of his own flourishes to help out the chorus. "But who, in the saint's name, ever expected to have heard such a jolly chant come from a hermit's cell at midnight?" "Marry, that should I," said Gurth, "for the jolly Clerk of Copmanhurst is a known man and kills half the deer that are stolen in this walk. Men say that the deer-keeper has complained of him and that he will be stripped of his [v]cowl and [v]cope altogether if he keep not better order." While they were thus speaking, Locksley's loud and repeated knocks had at length disturbed the [v]anchorite and his guest, who was a knight of singularly powerful build and open, handsome face, and in black armor. "By my beads," said the hermit, "here come other guests. I would not for my cowl that they found us in this goodly exercise. All men have enemies, sir knight; and there be those malignant enough to construe the hospitable refreshment I have been offering to you, a weary traveler, into drinking and gluttony, vices alike alien to my profession and my disposition." "Base [v]calumniators!" replied the knight. "I would I had the chastising of them. Nevertheless, holy clerk, it is true that all have their enemies; and there be those in this very land whom I would rather speak to through the bars of my helmet than bare-faced."