Only he kept the French knight's
beautiful dagger that was made of Spanish steel, inlaid with gold, and
used it to his life's end.
Here it may be told that it was not until thirty-six hours had gone by,
as Hugh learned afterward, that a countryman brought this knight and
his companions, more dead than alive, to Dunwich in his wain. As he was
travelling across Westleton Heath, with a load of corn to be ground at
the Dunwich mill, it seemed that he heard voices calling feebly, and
guided by them found these unhappy men half buried in the snow that had
fallen on that day, and so rescued them from death.
But when Sir Edmund Acour knew the story of their overthrow and of the
message that Hugh had sent to him, he raved at them, and especially
at Sir Pierre de la Roche, saying that the worst of young de Cressi's
crimes against him was that he had left such cowardly hounds alive upon
the earth. So he went on madly till Sir John Clavering checked him,
bidding him wait to revile these men until he, and not his horse, had
met Grey Dick's arrows and Hugh de Cressi's sword.
"For," he added, "it may happen then that you will fare no better than
they have done, or than did John, my son."
On the morning of the third day after they left Dunwich, having been
much delayed by foul weather and fouler roads, Hugh de Cressi and his
company came at length to London.
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