One only lingered, the black-browed Baron Brocas, who, making a gambade which brought him within arm-sweep of the serf, slashed him across the face with his riding-whip.

"Doff, dog, doff," he hissed, "when a monarch deigns to lower his eyes to such as you!"-- then spurred through the underwood and was gone, with a gleam of steel shoes and flutter of dead leaves.
The villein took the cruel blow without wince or cry, as one to whom stripes are a birthright and an inheritance.

His eyes flashed, however, and he shook his bony hand with a fierce wild gesture after the retreating figure.
"Black hound of Gascony," he muttered, "evil the day that you and those like you set foot in free England! I know thy kennel of Rochecourt.

The night will come when I may do to thee and thine what you and your class have wrought upon mine and me.

May God smite me if I fail to smite thee, thou French robber, with thy wife and thy child and all that is under thy castle roof!" "Forbear!" cried Alleyne.