The only sign of discipline he saw was the careful grooming of some horses, which he rightly guessed to be those ridden by the knights, and the equally careful polishing of pieces of armour before the doors of the huts.  He wished now to inquire his way to the king’s levy, but as the question rose to his lips he checked himself, remembering the caution the friendly carters had given him.  He therefore determined to walk about the camp till he found some evidence that he was in the immediate neighbourhood of the king.

He rose, stood about a little while to allay any possible suspicion (quite needless precautions, for the soldiers were far too agreeably engaged to take the least notice of him), and then sauntered off with as careless an air as he could assume.  Looking about him, first at a forge where the blacksmith was shoeing a horse, then at a grindstone, where a knight’s sword was being sharpened, he was nearly knocked down by a horse, urged at some speed through the crowds.  By a rope from the collar, three dead bodies were drawn along the ground, dusty and disfigured by bumping against stone and clod.  They were those of slaves, hanged the preceding day, perhaps for pilfering, perhaps for a mere whim, since every baron had power of the gallows.

They were dragged through the camp, and out a few hundred yards beyond, and there left to the crows.  This horrible sight, to which the rest were so accustomed and so indifferent that they did not even turn to look at it, deeply shocked him; the drawn and distorted features, the tongues protruding and literally licking the dust, haunted him for long after.  Though his father, as a baron, possessed the same power, it had never been exercised during his tenure of the estate, so that Felix had not been hardened to the sight of executions, common enough elsewhere.  Upon the Old House estate a species of negative humanity reigned; if the slaves were not emancipated, they were not hanged or cruelly beaten for trifles.

Hastening from the spot, Felix came across the artillery, which consisted of battering rams and immense crossbows; the bows were made from entire trees, or, more properly, poles.  He inspected these clumsy contrivances with interest, and entered into a conversation with some men who were fitting up the framework on which a battering ram was to swing.  Being extremely conceited with themselves and the knowledge they had acquired from experience only (as the repeated blows of the block drive home the pile), they scarcely answered him.  But, presently, as he lent a hand to assist, and bore with their churlishness without reply, they softened, and, as usual, asked him to drink, for here, and throughout the camp, the ale was plentiful, too plentiful for much progress.