shed for the physician, and he ambled away with much dignity upon his
road to Southampton. The tooth-drawer and the gleeman called for a cup
of small ale apiece, and started off together for Ringwood fair, the old
jongleur looking very yellow in the eye and swollen in the face after
his overnight potations. The archer, however, who had drunk more than
any man in the room, was as merry as a grig, and having kissed the
matron and chased the maid up the ladder once more, he went out to the
brook, and came back with the water dripping from his face and hair.

"Hola! my man of peace," he cried to Alleyne, "whither are you bent this
morning?"

"To Minstead," quoth he. "My brother Simon Edricson is socman there, and
I go to bide with him for a while. I prythee, let me have my score, good
dame."

"Score, indeed!" cried she, standing with upraised hands in front of the
panel on which Alleyne had worked the night before. "Say, rather what
it is that I owe to thee, good youth. Aye, this is indeed a pied merlin,
and with a leveret under its claws, as I am a living woman. By the rood
of Waltham! but thy touch is deft and dainty."

"And see the red eye of it!" cried the maid.

"Aye, and the open beak."

"And the ruffled wing," added Hordle John.

"By my hilt!" cried the archer, "it is the very bird itself."

The young clerk flushed with pleasure at this chorus of praise, rude and
indiscriminate indeed, and yet so much heartier and less grudging than
any which he had ever heard from the critical brother Jerome, or the
short-spoken Abbot. There was, it would seem, great kindness as well as
great wickedness in this world, of which he had heard so little that was
good. His hostess would hear nothing of his paying either for bed or
for board, while the archer and Hordle John placed a hand upon either
shoulder and led him off to the board, where some smoking fish, a dish
of spinach, and a jug of milk were laid out for their breakfast.

"I should not be surprised to learn, mon camarade," said the soldier, as
he heaped a slice of fish upon Alleyne's tranchoir of bread, "that you
could read written things, since you are so ready with your brushes and
pigments."

"It would be shame to the good brothers of Beaulieu if I could not," he
answered, "seeing that I have been their clerk this ten years back."

The bowman looked at him with great respect. "Think of that!" said he.
"And you with not a hair to your face, and a skin like a gir