It would scarce pass in England, but they are quiet folk over the water." "And what other nations have you seen in your travels, good sir ?" asked Alleyne Edricson.

His young mind hungered for plain facts of life, after the long course of speculation and of mysticism on which he had been trained.
"I have seen the low countryman in arms, and I have nought to say against him.

Heavy and slow is he by nature, and is not to be brought into battle for the sake of a lady's eyelash or the twang of a minstrel's string, like the hotter blood of the south.

But ma foi! lay hand on his wool-bales, or trifle with his velvet of Bruges, and out buzzes every stout burgher, like bees from the tee-hole, ready to lay on as though it were his one business in life.

By our lady! they have shown the French at Courtrai and elsewhere that they are as deft in wielding steel as in welding it." "And the men of Spain ?" "They too are very hardy soldiers, the more so as for many hundred years they have had to fight hard against the cursed followers of the black Mahound, who have pressed upon them from the south, and still, as I understand, hold the fairer half of the country.