[Red Axe by Samuel Rutherford Crockett]@TWC D-Link bookRed Axe CHAPTER XXV 4/9
It might teach her in what manner to cut her cloth. The archers of the Prince camped with us the rest of the night in the place of the outcast crew.
They behaved well (though their forbearance was perhaps as much owing to the near presence of the Princess as to any inherent virtue in the good men of the bow) to the women and children who remained huddled in the corners. Then came the dawn, swift-foot from the east.
A fair dawn it was, the sun rising, not through barred clouds, with the lightest at the horizon (which is the foul-weather dawn), but through streamers and bannerets that fluttered upward and fired to ever fleecier crimson and gold as he rose. We rode among a subdued people, and ere we went the Princess called for the Burgomeister and bade him send to Plassenburg the landlord, so soon as he should be found, and also the heads of the half-dozen houses on either side of the inn. Then, indeed, there was a turmoil and a wailing to speak about.
Women folk crowded out of the huts and kissed the white feet of the palfrey that bore the Lady Ysolinde. "Have mercy!" they wailed; "show kindness, great Princess! Here are our men, unwounded and unhurt, that have lain by our sides all the night. They are innocent of all intent of evil--of every dark deed.
Ah, lady, send them not to your prisons.
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