Marpasse and Isoult made the fire, Isoult using the flint, steel and tinder they carried with them, Marpasse playing the part of bellows. The fire proved sulky, perhaps because of Isoult’s temper, and her muttering of curses. Marpasse knelt and blew till her brown cheeks were like bladders. The flames seemed pleased by her good-natured, strenuous face, for they shot up, and began to lick the wood. Marpasse sat back suddenly on her heels, her face very red, and shading her eyes with her hand, she looked out into the darkness. “Poof, is it the blood in my ears, or do I hear something?” Isoult was also on the alert, her eyes bright under a frowning forehead. “Horses,” she said. “What are they doing this time of the night?” From somewhere came the dull thunder of many horses at the trot. Nothing was distinguishable but the fires that had been lit here and there about the town, fires that shone like golden nails on the sable escutcheon of the night. Isoult, who was very quick of hearing, swore that more than a thousand horses must be moving yonder in the darkness. “Curses, but it must be the rear-guard,” said Marpasse; “God send them clear of us, or we shall be over-crowded. The fire will save us from being trampled on.” The thunder of hoofs came nearer, a sound that sent a vague shudder through the darkness as though something infinitely strong and infinitely savage were rushing on out of the gloom. The earth shook. A sense of movement grew in the outer darkness, a sense of movement that approached like a phosphorescent wave swinging in from a midnight sea. Then a trumpet screamed. There was a rattling and chafing like the noise made by the tackle of a great ship when she puts about in a high wind. A shrill, faint voice from somewhere shouted an order. The belated rear-guard of the host, for such it was, halted within a furlong of the women’s fire. Marpasse shook her fist at the dark mass. “Fools, you should have been drunk down yonder in the town by now! We can do very well without you. And as likely as not you will thieve our fire.” Isoult laughed. “Some thieves might be welcome,” she said. And Denise, who had listened to it all with tired apathy, seemed to wake suddenly and to feel the cold, for she shivered and drew nearer to the fire. Despite the newcomers, Isoult, Marpasse and Denise sat round the burning wood, breaking their bread, and listening to the shouts of the men, and the trampling and snorting of horses. It was pitch dark beyond the circle of light thrown by the fire, though torches began to go to and fro like great moths with flaming wings. Marpasse and Isoult both had their ears open. They were rough women in the midst of rough men, and their instincts were as fierce and keen as the instincts of wild things that hunt or are hunted at night.