long before either I or mine need his help! He is here to-night
for herbergage, as are the others except the foresters. His
neighbor is a tooth-drawer. That bag at his girdle is full of
the teeth that he drew at Winchester fair. I warrant that there
are more sound ones than sorry, for he is quick at his work and a
trifle dim in the eye. The lusty man next him with the red head
I have not seen before. The four on this side are all workers,
three of them in the service of the bailiff of Sir Baldwin
Redvers, and the other, 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