"What fortune, Sir Foulke; have you got the villeyn?" "Safe enough, Fitz Hugh," replied the knight; "but he is no mere brute, as you fellows told me, but a perilous, shrewd, intelligent, clear-headed Saxon. He has been advised, too, in this matter, by some one well-skilled in the law, and was, I think, expecting our coming. I should not marvel much, if De Taillebois have notice of us. We must be in the saddle again as soon as possible. But I must have a morsel ere we start; I have not tasted aught since high-noon, and then it was but a beggarly oat-cake and a flask of mead. What have you there?" "Some right good treble ale, beausire; let me fill you a tankard, and play cup-bearer for once." And, suiting the action to the word, he filled out a mighty horn of the liquid amber, capped with its snowy foam, and handed it to the knight, adding, "The supper is but fragments, but there is more at the fire now. I will go to the stables, and see the fresh horses saddled and caparisoned; and as I pass the buttery and tap, I will stir up the loitering knaves." "Do so, Fitz Hugh," replied the other; "but hasten, Jesu Maria! hasten! I reckon but half done until we are out of this beggarly hole, and under way for merry Yorkshire. And hark you, Fitz Hugh, let them bring in the prisoner. We must have him along with us; and ten of the best men, lightly armed, and mounted on the pick of our stud. Ten more may tarry with the tired beasts we have just used, and bring them on with the baggage and sumpter horses to-morrow." Then, as his officer left the hall to attend to his multifarious duties, he quaffed another huge flagon of the strong, heady ale; and, casting himself into a settle in the chimney-corner, what between the warmth of the fire, grateful after his hard ride in the chilly night air, and the fumes of the heady tankard, he sunk into a doze, from which he only aroused himself, when, half an hour afterward, in came a dozen clumsy village servants, stamping and clattering in their heavy-clouted shoes, and loaded the table with smoking platters and huge joints, of which, however coarse the cookery, the odors were any thing but unsavory. To supper accordingly he now applied himself, two or three of the men who had been with him at the seizure of Kenric, crowding into the room and taking the lower end of the table, where another great fire was blazing, and others coming in and out in succession, until all were satisfied.