of the woodmen and three of the laborers drank their portions off
hurriedly and trooped off together, for their homes were distant
and the hour late. The others, however, drew closer, leaving the
place of honor to the right of the gleeman to the free-handed
new-comer. He had thrown off his steel cap and his brigandine,
and had placed them with his sword, his quiver and his painted
long-bow, on the top of his varied heap of plunder in the corner.
Now, with his thick and somewhat bowed legs stretched in front of
the blaze, his green jerkin thrown open, and a great quart pot
held in his corded fist, he looked the picture of comfort and of
good-fellowship. His hard-set face had softened, and the thick
crop of crisp brown curls which had been hidden by his helmet
grew low upon his massive neck. He might have been forty years
of age, though hard toil and harder pleasure had left their grim
marks upon his features. Alleyne had ceased painting his pied
merlin, and sat, brush in hand, staring with open eyes at a type
of man so strange and so unlike any whom he had met. Men had
been good or had been bad in his catalogue, but here was a man
who was fierce one instant and gentle the next, with a curse on
his lips and a smile in his eye. What was to be made of such a
man as that?

It chanced that the soldier looked up and saw the questioning
glance which the young clerk threw upon him. He raised his
flagon and drank to him, with a merry flash of his white teeth.

"A toi, mon garcon," he cried. "Hast surely never seen a
man-at-arms, that thou shouldst stare so?"

"I never have," said Alleyne frankly, "though I have oft heard