ll go on and make an
end of my story."

Ralph nodded to him kindly, for now he remembered the carle, though he
had seen him but that once when he rode the Greenway across the downs
to Higham. The old man looked up at him as if he too had an inkling of
old acquaintance with Ralph, but went on presently:

"There is a woman who dwells alone with none to help her, anigh to
Saint Ann's Chapel; a woman not very old; for she is of mine own age,
and time was we have had many a fair play in the ingles of the downs in
the July weather--not very old, I say, but wondrous wise, as I know
better than most men; for oft, even when she was young, would she
foretell things to come to me, and ever it fell out according to her
spaedom. To the said woman I sought to-day in the morning, not to win
any wisdom of her, but to talk over remembrances of old days; but when
I came into her house, lo, there was my carline walking up and down the
floor, and she turned round upon me like the young woman of past days,
and stamped her foot and cried out: 'What does the sluggard dallying
about women's chambers when the time is come for the deliverance?'

"I let her talk, and spake no word lest I should spoil her story, and
she went on:

"'Take thy staff, lad, for thou art stout as well as merry, and go
adown to the thorps at the feet of the downs toward Higham; keep thee
well from the Burg-devils, and go from stead to stead till thou comest
on a captain of men-at-arms who is lord over a company of green-coats,
green-coats of the Dry Tree--a young lord, fair-faced, and kind-faced,
and mighty, and not to be conquered, and the blessing of the folk and
the leader of the Shepherds, and the foe of their foeman and the
well-beloved of Bear-father. Go night and day, sit not down to eat,
stand not to drink; heed none that crieth after thee for deliverance,
but go, go, go till thou hast found him. Meseems I see him riding
toward Higham, but those dastards will not open gate to him, of that be
sure. He shall pass on and lie to-night, it may be at Mileham, it may
be at Milton, it may be at Garton; at one of those thorps shall ye find
him. And when ye have found him thus bespeak him: O bright Friend of
the Well, turn not aside to fall on the Burgers in this land, either at
Foxworth Castle, or the Longford, or the Nineways Garth: all that thou
mayest do hereafter, thou or thy champions. There be Burgers
otherwhere, housed in no strong castle, but wending t