The passing of fifty thousand armed men, to say nothing of the baggage rabble, was no blessing to the country folk whom it concerned. Lords, knights, men-at-arms, bowmen, scullions, horse-boys, and harlots went pouring southwards in the May sunshine, ready to thieve whatever came to hand. King Paunch ruled the multitude, for the host ate up the land, and called like a hungry rookery “more, more!” And since a hungry mob is an ill-tempered one when once its patience has leaked out of its tired toes, the King’s followers began to grow very rough and cruel before they had marched five leagues. Hunger does not stand on ceremony, and such brutal things were done that the country folk took to the woods and swore death to any straggler. Bludgeon, and axe, and bow took toll of the King’s host, and many a rowdy was caught and left grinning at the heavens, with his stiff toes in the air. Now Marpasse and her friends were as hungry as the rest, and coming as they did, like fowls late for feeding time, their genius for theft was developed by necessity. Yet it is not so easy to steal when everything eatable has been stolen, and when a crossbow bolt may come burring from behind a wood-stack. None the less, Marpasse and her company were in luck not ten miles from Tonbridge Town. They saw a sow feeding on the edge of a beech wood close to the road. There was much pannage in the neighbourhood, and Marpasse and her comrades tucked up their skirts, and went a-hunting, and were blessed with the sight of the black backs of a whole drove of swine. Great and grotesque was the joy that hounded and hunted through the beech wood, a mob of men-at-arms, beggars, boys, and women trampling the bluebells and the brown and crackling bracken. They shouted, laughed, and cursed as they rounded up the swine, and chased them hither and thither amid the trees. God Pan and his minions went tumbling over tree roots after the black beasts that bolted, and squealed, and flickered like grotesque shadows under the boughs of the beeches. Marpasse, her skirts tucked up, and her knife flashing, shouted and ran with the lustiest till the sweat rolled into her eyes. As she stood to get her breath, a fat sow came labouring by with a young pig close to her haunches. Chasing them came a long, loose-limbed boy, his hair over his face, his mouth a-gape, his thin legs bounding, striding, and ripping through the bracken. He came up with the chase close to Marpasse, and threw himself on the young porker as a leopard might leap upon a deer. Brown boy and black hog rolled in a tangle into a clump of rotting bracken, and Marpasse, holding her sides, laughed at the tussle, and then ran on after the sow.