“Goodbye, friend,” he muttered; “at least that is the best way to go hence, dying with a dead foe beneath,” and, picking up the peregrine, he smoothed her ruffled feathers and placed her tenderly in his satchel.

Then it was, just as Adrian rose to his feet, standing beneath the shadow of the big oak upon which the birds had fallen, that coming from the road, which was separated from him by a little belt of undergrowth, he heard the sound of men’s voices growling and threatening, and with them a woman’s cry for help.  At any other time he would have hesitated and reconnoitred, or, perhaps, have retreated at once, for he knew well the dangers of mixing himself up in the quarrels of wayfarers in those rough days.  But the loss of the hawk had exasperated his nerves, making any excitement or adventure welcome to him.  Therefore, without pausing to think, Adrian pushed forward through the brushwood to find himself in the midst of a curious scene.

Before him ran the grassy road or woodland lane.  In the midst of it, sprawling on his back, for he had been pulled from his horse, lay a stout burgher, whose pockets were being rifled by a heavy-browed footpad, who from time to time, doubtless to keep him quiet, threatened his victim with a knife.  On the pillion of the burgher’s thickset Flemish horse, which was peacefully cropping at the grass, sat a middle-aged female, who seemed to be stricken dumb with terror, while a few paces away a second ruffian and a tall, bony woman were engaged in dragging a girl from the back of a mule.

Acting on the impulse of the moment, Adrian shouted,

“Come on, friends, here are the thieves,” whereon the robber woman took to flight and the man wheeled round, as he turned snatching a naked knife from his girdle.  But before he could lift it Adrian’s heavy staff crashed down upon the point of his shoulder, causing him to drop the dagger with a howl of pain.  Again the staff rose and fell, this time upon his head, staggering him and knocking off his cap, so that the light, such as it was, shone upon his villainous fat face, the fringe of sandy-coloured whisker running from throat to temples, and the bald head above, which Adrian knew at once for that of Hague Simon, or the Butcher.  Fortunately for him, however, the Butcher was too surprised, or too much confused by the blow which he had received upon his head, to recognise his assailant.  Nor, having lost his knife, and believing doubtless that Adrian was only the first of a troop of rescuers, did he seem inclined to continue the combat, but, calling to his companion to follow him, he began to run after the woman with a swiftness almost incredible in a man of his build and weight, turning presently into the brushwood, where he and his two fellow thieves vanished away.