CHAPTER III--THE BATTLE OF SHOREBY (Concluded)
Dick, once more left to his own counsels, began to look about him.
The arrow-shot had somewhat slackened. On all sides the enemy were
falling back; and the greater part of the market-place was now left
empty, the snow here trampled into orange mud, there splashed with
gore, scattered all over with dead men and horses, and bristling
thick with feathered arrows.
On his own side the loss had been cruel. The jaws of the little
street and the ruins of the barricade were heaped with the dead and
dying; and out of the hundred men with whom he had begun the
battle, there were not seventy left who could still stand to arms.
At the same time, the day was passing. The first reinforcements
might be looked for to arrive at any moment; and the Lancastrians,
already shaken by the result of their desperate but unsuccessful
onslaught, were in an ill temper to support a fresh invader.
There was a dial in the wall of one of the two flanking houses; and
this, in the frosty winter sunshine, indicated ten of the forenoon.
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