“Ha!” said Front-de-Boeuf, “thou changest thy tone, Sir Priest, and speakest brief and bold, as if thy heart were in the slaughter of the Saxon herd; and yet thou art thyself of kindred to the swine?”

Cedric was no ready practiser of the art of dissimulation, and would at this moment have been much the better of a hint from Wamba’s more fertile brain. But necessity, according to the ancient proverb, sharpens invention, and he muttered something under his cowl concerning the men in question being excommunicated outlaws both to church and to kingdom.