"Then take this pathway on the left, I pray thee, and then the
deer-track which passes on the right. You will then see under a
great beech-tree the hut of a charcoal-burner. Give him my name,
good sir, the name of Peter the fuller, of Lymington, and ask him
for a change of raiment, that I may pursue my journey without
delay. There are reasons why he would be loth to refuse me."

Alleyne started off along the path indicated, and soon found the
log-hut where the burner dwelt. He was away faggot-cutting in
the forest, but his wife, a ruddy bustling dame, found the
needful garments and tied them into a bundle. While she busied
herself in finding and folding them, Alleyne Edricson stood by
the open door looking in at her with much interest and some
distrust, for he had never been so nigh to a woman before. She
had round red arms, a dress of some sober woollen stuff, and a
brass brooch the size of a cheese-cake stuck in the front of it.

"Peter the fuller!" she kept repeating. "Marry come up! if I
were Peter the fuller's wife I would teach him better than to
give his clothes to the first knave who asks for them. But he
was always a poor, fond, silly creature, was Peter, though we are
beholden to him for helping to bury our second son Wat, who was a
'prentice to him at Lymington in the year of the Black Death.
But who are you, young sir?"

"I am a clerk on my road from Beaulieu to Minstead."

"Aye, indeed! Hast been brought up at the Abbey then. I could
read it from thy reddened cheek and downcast eye. Hast learned