uch
mock politeness and stalked onwards in his borrowed clothes. Alleyne
watched him until he was small in the distance, and then, wiping the
tears from his eyes, he set off briskly once more upon his journey.

CHAPTER IV. HOW THE BAILIFF OF SOUTHAMPTON SLEW THE TWO MASTERLESS MEN.

The road along which he travelled was scarce as populous as most other
roads in the kingdom, and far less so than those which lie between the
larger towns. Yet from time to time Alleyne met other wayfarers, and
more than once was overtaken by strings of pack mules and horsemen
journeying in the same direction as himself. Once a begging friar came
limping along in a brown habit, imploring in a most dolorous voice to
give him a single groat to buy bread wherewith to save himself from
impending death. Alleyne passed him swiftly by, for he had learned from
the monks to have no love for the wandering friars, and, besides, there
was a great half-gnawed mutton bone sticking out of his pouch to prove
him a liar. Swiftly as he went, however, he could not escape the curse
of the four blessed evangelists which the mendicant howled behind him.
So dreadful are his execrations that the frightened lad thrust his
fingers into his ear-holes, and ran until the fellow was but a brown
smirch upon the yellow road.

Further on, at the edge of the woodland, he came upon a chapman and his
wife, who sat upon a fallen tree. He had put his pack down as a table,
and the two of them were devouring a great pasty, and washing it down
with some drink from a stone jar. The chapman broke a rough jest as he
passed, and the woman called shrilly to Alleyne to come and join them,
on which the man, turning suddenly from mirth to wrath, began to belabor
her with his cudgel. Alleyne hastened on, lest he make more mischief,
and his heart was heavy as lead within him. Look where he would, he
seemed to see nothing but injustice and violence and the hardness of man
to man.

But even as he brooded sadly over it and pined for the sweet peace of
the Abbey, he came on an open space dotted with holly bushes, where was
the strangest sight that he had yet chanced upon. Near to the pathway
lay a long clump of greenery, and from behind this there stuck straight
up into the air four human legs clad in parti-colored hosen, yellow and
black. Strangest of all was when a brisk tune struck suddenly up and
the four legs began to kick and twitter in time to the music. Walking on
tiptoe round