Crecy or Poitiers, and seen the proudest chivalry in the world
unable to make head against the weapons of disciplined peasants. Power
had changed hands. The protector had become the protected, and the whole
fabric of the feudal system was tottering to a fall. Hence the fierce
mutterings of the lower classes and the constant discontent, breaking
out into local tumult and outrage, and culminating some years later in
the great rising of Tyler. What Alleyne saw and wondered at in Hampshire
would have appealed equally to the traveller in any other English county
from the Channel to the marches of Scotland.

He was following the track, his misgivings increasing with every step
which took him nearer to that home which he had never seen, when of a
sudden the trees began to thin and the sward to spread out onto a broad,
green lawn, where five cows lay in the sunshine and droves of black
swine wandered unchecked. A brown forest stream swirled down the centre
of this clearing, with a rude bridge flung across it, and on the other
side was a second field sloping up to a long, low-lying wooden house,
with thatched roof and open squares for windows. Alleyne gazed across
at it with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes--for this, he knew, must
be the home of his fathers. A wreath of blue smoke floated up through a
hole in the thatch, and was the only sign of life in the place, save a
great black hound which lay sleeping chained to the door-post. In the
yellow shimmer of the autumn sunshine it lay as peacefully and as still
as he had oft pictured it to himself in his dreams.

He was roused, however, from his pleasant reverie by the sound of
voices, and two people emerged from the forest some little way to his
right and moved across the field in the direction of the bridge. The one
was a man with yellow flowing beard and very long hair of the same tint
drooping over his shoulders; his dress of good Norwich cloth and his
assured bearing marked him as a man of position, while the sombre hue
of his clothes and the absence of all ornament contrasted with the flash
and glitter which had marked the king's retinue. By his side walked
a woman, tall and slight and dark, with lithe, graceful figure and
clear-cut, composed features. Her jet-black hair was gathered back under
a light pink coif, her head poised proudly upon her neck, and her step
long and springy, like that of some wild, tireless woodland creature.
She held her left hand in front of her,