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