e to a beggar up the road I----"

"Nay, my lord," said Alleyne, "I still have some moneys remaining."

"Then I pray you to give them to this very worthy woman." He cantered
on as he spoke, while Alleyne, having dispensed two more pence, left
the old dame standing by the furthest cottage of Hordle, with her shrill
voice raised in blessings instead of revilings.

There were two cross-roads before they reached the Lymington Ford, and
at each of then Sir Nigel pulled up his horse, and waited with many a
curvet and gambade, craning his neck this way and that to see if fortune
would send him a venture. Crossroads had, as he explained, been rare
places for knightly spear-runnings, and in his youth it was no uncommon
thing for a cavalier to abide for weeks at such a point, holding gentle
debate with all comers, to his own advancement and the great honor of
his lady. The times were changed, however, and the forest tracks wound
away from them deserted and silent, with no trample of war-horse or
clang of armor which might herald the approach of an adversary--so that
Sir Nigel rode on his way disconsolate. At the Lymington River they
splashed through the ford, and lay in the meadows on the further side to
eat the bread and salt meat which they carried upon the sumpter horses.
Then, ere the sun was on the slope of the heavens, they had deftly
trussed up again, and were swinging merrily upon their way, two hundred
feet moving like two.

There is a third cross-road where the track from Boldre runs down to the
old fishing village of Pitt's Deep. Down this, as they came abreast of
it, there walked two men, the one a pace or two behind the other. The
cavaliers could not but pull up their horses to look at them, for a
stranger pair were never seen journeying together. The first was a
misshapen, squalid man with cruel, cunning eyes and a shock of tangled
red hair, bearing in his hands a small unpainted cross, which he held
high so that all men might see it. He seemed to be in the last extremity
of fright, with a face the color of clay and his limbs all ashake as one
who hath an ague. Behind him, with his toe ever rasping upon the other's
heels, there walked a very stern, black-bearded man with a hard eye and
a set mouth. He bore over his shoulder a great knotted stick with three
jagged nails stuck in the head of it, and from time to time he whirled
it up in the air with a quivering arm, as though he could scarce hold
back from dashing h