They sprang at the foe, who had also seen the arrow strike its mark, and had paused a moment in chivalrous horror, and so were unprepared to meet the onslaught. Thus the tide of battle turned once more, and Earl Warrenne and his followers were driven out through the breach by which they had entered. Then, when the knights of the garrison rode back in grievous haste to satisfy their anxiety for their lord's bride, the countess still stood before the portal, laughing, though the arrow stuck in her arm. 'See!' she said, 'it is nothing! Only a flesh-wound. I have leeched a hundred worse.' The Normans and the Bretons and the Saxons all joined in tumultuous cheers, and vowed to save their countess and their castle if they died to the last man. '_Merci!_ brave hearts!' cried the countess. 'That was well spoken! Holy Mary grant my lord may relieve us ere many days are past!' Then they entreated her to have her wound looked to; and she swept away to the spital, and there had the arrow cut out of her white arm, so all her wounded warriors might see; and the legend of her unflinching courage spread like wildfire through the garrison, and even into the camp of the besiegers without. 'By St. Michael!' cried Robert Malet, 'these rebels seem to have the knack of coining heroines. Thou and my father, Earl Warrenne, had shrewd experience of Hereward's witch of a wife in the Fenlands by Ely,--how she wound up the wild galliards her husband got to follow him with her sorceries and incantations till they were at the point of madness! Sooth, methinks we have to deal with such another.' Then Leofric Ealdredsson, who had been carried into the camp, and lay within earshot, raised himself up and swore mightily. 'No witch was Torfrida,' he cried in anger, 'but as true and noble a woman as ever God made! So truly is De Guader's countess, Norman though she be!' At which the king's captains laughed, and turned to Leofric. 'Ay! thou wast one of that pestilent Hereward's most saucy upholders, I well remember; and now thou art leader in this hornet's nest also, I trow!' said Earl William. 'Dost thou know the mark we are bid to set on all our prisoners in this affair, to the end that we may recognise them again when we meet them?' 'Do your worst, usurping cowards!' answered the furious Anglo-Dane. 'When Sweyn Ulfsson follows De Guader home, and claims his own, and drives the tanner's grandson from the throne he has stolen, he will put _his_ mark on _you_ in return, I warrant me!' Malet's face grew dark; for William himself and William's followers resented no insult so deeply as any allusion to the honest fell-monger of Falaise. But Earl Warrenne was too wise to quarrel with a wounded man, and said good-humouredly,--