old Saxon manor-house, with a couple of farms and a grove large enough
to afford pannage to a hundred pigs--"sylva de centum porcis," as the
old family parchments describe it. Above all, the owner of the soil
could still hold his head high as the veritable Socman of Minstead--that
is, as holding the land in free socage, with no feudal superior, and
answerable to no man lower than the king. Knowing this, Alleyne felt
some little glow of worldly pride as he looked for the first time
upon the land with which so many generations of his ancestors had been
associated. He pushed on the quicker, twirling his staff merrily, and
looking out at every turn of the path for some sign of the old Saxon
residence. He was suddenly arrested, however, by the appearance of a
wild-looking fellow armed with a club, who sprang out from behind a tree
and barred his passage. He was a rough, powerful peasant, with cap and
tunic of untanned sheepskin, leather breeches, and galligaskins round
legs and feet.

"Stand!" he shouted, raising his heavy cudgel to enforce the order. "Who
are you who walk so freely through the wood? Whither would you go, and
what is your errand?"

"Why should I answer your questions, my friend?" said Alleyne, standing
on his guard.

"Because your tongue may save your pate. But where have I looked upon
your face before?"

"No longer ago than last night at the 'Pied Merlin,'" the clerk
answered, recognizing the escaped serf who had been so outspoken as to
his wrongs.

"By the Virgin! yes. You were the little clerk who sat so mum in the
corner, and then cried fy on the gleeman. What hast in the scrip?"

"Naught of any price."

"How can I tell that, clerk? Let me see."

"Not I."

"Fool! I could pull you limb from limb like a pullet. What would you
have? Hast forgot that we are alone far from all men? How can your
clerkship help you? Wouldst lose scrip and life too?"

"I will part with neither without fight."

"A fight, quotha? A fight betwixt spurred cock and new hatched chicken!
Thy fighting days may soon be over."

"Hadst asked me in the name of charity I would have given freely," cried
Alleyne. "As it stands, not one farthing shall you have with my free
will, and when I see my brother, the Socman of Minstead, he will raise
hue and cry from vill to vill, from hundred to hundred, until you are
taken as a common robber and a scourge to the country."

The outlaw sank his club. "The Socman's brother!" he gasped.