her, he with the sheepskin, is, as I hear, a villein from the midlands
who hath run from his master. His year and day are well-nigh up, when he
will be a free man."

"And the other?" asked Alleyne in a whisper. "He is surely some very
great man, for he looks as though he scorned those who were about him."

The landlady looked at him in a motherly way and shook her head. "You
have had no great truck with the world," she said, "or you would have
learned that it is the small men and not the great who hold their noses
in the air. Look at those shields upon my wall and under my eaves. Each
of them is the device of some noble lord or gallant knight who hath
slept under my roof at one time or another. Yet milder men or easier to
please I have never seen: eating my bacon and drinking my wine with a
merry face, and paying my score with some courteous word or jest which
was dearer to me than my profit. Those are the true gentles. But your
chapman or your bearward will swear that there is a lime in the wine,
and water in the ale, and fling off at the last with a curse instead of
a blessing. This youth is a scholar from Cambrig, where men are wont to
be blown out by a little knowledge, and lose the use of their hands in
learning the laws of the Romans. But I must away to lay down the beds.
So may the saints keep you and prosper you in your undertaking!"

Thus left to himself, Alleyne drew his panel of wood where the light of
one of the torches would strike full upon it, and worked away with all
the pleasure of the trained craftsman, listening the while to the talk
which went on round the fire. The peasant in the sheepskins, who had
sat glum and silent all evening, had been so heated by his flagon of ale
that he was talking loudly and angrily with clenched hands and flashing
eyes.

"Sir Humphrey Tennant of Ashby may till his own fields for me," he
cried. "The castle has thrown its shadow upon the cottage over long.
For three hundred years my folk have swinked and sweated, day in and day
out, to keep the wine on the lord's table and the harness on the lord's
back. Let him take off his plates and delve himself, if delving must be
done."

"A proper spirit, my fair son!" said one of the free laborers. "I would
that all men were of thy way of thinking."

"He would have sold me with his acres," the other cried, in a
voice which was hoarse with passion. "'The man, the woman and their
litter'--so ran the words of the dotard bailiff. N