wrath and astonishment. “No wonder that churls and yeomen wax so presumptuous as even to lay leaguer before castles, and that clowns and swineherds send defiances to nobles, since men-at-arms have turned sick men’s nurses, and Free Companions are grown keepers of dying folk’s curtains, when the castle is about to be assailed.—To the battlements, ye loitering villains!” he exclaimed, raising his stentorian voice till the arches around rung again, “to the battlements, or I will splinter your bones with this truncheon!”
The men sulkily replied, “that they desired nothing better than to go to the battlements, providing Front-de-Boeuf would bear them out with their master, who had commanded them to tend the dying man.”
“The dying man, knaves!” rejoined the Baron; “I promise thee we shall all be dying men an we stand not to it the more stoutly. But I will relieve the guard upon this caitiff companion of yours.—Here, Urfried—hag—fiend of a Saxon witch—hearest me not?—tend me this bedridden fellow since he must needs be tended, whilst these knaves use their weapons.—Here be two arblasts, comrades, with windlaces and quarrells —to the barbican with you, and see you drive each bolt through a Saxon brain.”