One night in December, when the snow lay pretty thick, and the frost was severe, and the ground hard as iron, and Eveille-chiens was absent from his camp on one of the many love adventures with which he diverted his leisure hours, the French were suddenly aroused from their slumbers by shouts of
“Hey for the fierce raven! Ho for the fierce raven!”
and found that Oliver in his white jacket, accompanied by six men, each of them as fearless and most of them stronger than himself, was among them and felling down everything in his way. Penetrating even to Clarembald’s tent, with the hope of taking the doughty warrior captive, they no sooner observed that it was empty than they seized on his red banner, carried it off as a trophy, and cutting their way with shouts of scorn and defiance through their startled foes, reached the island in safety. Oliver immediately climbed a high tree that grew close to the edge of the water, and fastened the red banner to one of the most prominent branches.
“There,” said he, as he descended and it began to flap in the keen, frosty wind--“there let it hang in wind and rain till Wake-dog plucks up courage to come and reclaim it. By the Holy Cross, the sight of it may tempt him to do something very venturesome, for surely it cannot fail to have the effect on him which scarlet has on the wounded bull.”
But still Clarembald made nothing worthy of the name of progress in his enterprise, whilst Oliver continued to make nocturnal sallies which cost the French so dear that Eveille-chiens was glad when the truce which Louis concluded with Pembroke gave him a fair excuse for leaving his red banner to its fate, drawing off his force, and returning to spend his Christmas at Lewes in the halls of the Warrens. The existence of the truce was also notified to William de Collingham by a messenger despatched by the Protector. But Collingham bluntly refused to recognise it.
“I know nothing,” the knight said, “of truces or treaties with Frenchmen who have come into England as invaders. I have sworn to devote myself to ridding the land of them, and to succeed or die in the attempt; and, come what may, I will never lay aside my arms till the invaders have laid down theirs. I have said my say.”