Two nights after, when they were resting at the day's end, the Carline (she hidden in the brake) came across the three men contending together in speech, and the words of the elder ending his talk she just caught: "Two thousand nobles at the least would the Lord James pay down for her; he hath none like her in the house." "Nor will have ever," said the second man. "And for my part I will not give her up for my share of a two thousand nobles." Spake the third thereon, and he was the stoutest-built and the gallantest-looked of the three: "Thou wilt not, thou! What sayest thou to me then? The beginning and the end of it is that I will take her to myself alone and sell her to none." "Yea, yea," said the elder, jeering, "and what shall we do?" "Thou shalt give her to me for a price," said the youngest. "Nay, but to me," said the second: "every one of thy pieces can I cover with a piece." "Now," said the elder, "we get on swimmingly; since, forsooth, I know not where either thou or he shall get all that gold from. Wherefore now the best thing ye two may do at this present is to fall both upon me, and slay me; and after that ye two can try it out betwixt yourselves, and he who is left can go back to our carles, who will straightway slay him when they have found the other two corpses. How say ye, my masters, is this a good game to play?" They sat looking surlily on him, but said nought. Then he said: "Since this is come above ground, which to say sooth I looked for, as ye are two such brisk lads, and the woman such a pearl of beauty, I bid you this way to take: let us bring her down into the peopled parts in peace and good fellowship, and then go all three before a priest and take God's Body at his hands, and pray it may choke us and rot us if we take her not straight to the Lord James and sell her unto him for the best penny we may, and share all alike, even as the honest and merry merchants we be. Ha, what say ye now?" Belike they saw that there was nothing else to be said, but as moody they were as moody might be. And to say sooth, the Carline deemed that, had it not been for the serving men that would be left over, she might well leave them to slay themselves. But now they went back to their folk, and the Carline followed them in a little while. Chapter LXIII. They Escape from the Chapmen by the Carline's Wizardry