a thick dark column of smoke marked their
position and hinted at the coarse plenty within. By these signs Alleyne
knew that he was on the very fringe of the forest, and therefore no
great way from Christchurch. The sun was lying low in the west and
shooting its level rays across the long sweep of rich green country,
glinting on the white-fleeced sheep and throwing long shadows from the
red kine who waded knee-deep in the juicy clover. Right glad was the
traveller to see the high tower of Christchurch Priory gleaming in the
mellow evening light, and gladder still when, on rounding a corner, he
came upon his comrades of the morning seated astraddle upon a fallen
tree. They had a flat space before them, on which they alternately threw
little square pieces of bone, and were so intent upon their occupation
that they never raised eye as he approached them. He observed with
astonishment, as he drew near, that the archer's bow was on John's
back, the archer's sword by John's side, and the steel cap laid upon the
tree-trunk between them.

"Mort de ma vie!" Aylward shouted, looking down at the dice. "Never had
I such cursed luck. A murrain on the bones! I have not thrown a good
main since I left Navarre. A one and a three! En avant, camarade!"

"Four and three," cried Hordle John, counting on his great fingers,
"that makes seven. Ho, archer, I have thy cap! Now have at thee for thy
jerkin!"

"Mon Dieu!" he growled, "I am like to reach Christchurch in my shirt."
Then suddenly glancing up, "Hola, by the splendor of heaven, here is our
cher petit! Now, by my ten finger bones! this is a rare sight to mine
eyes." He sprang up and threw his arms round Alleyne's neck, while
John, no less pleased, but more backward and Saxon in his habits, stood
grinning and bobbing by the wayside, with his newly won steel cap stuck
wrong side foremost upon his tangle of red hair.

"Hast come to stop?" cried the bowman, patting Alleyne all over in his
delight. "Shall not get away from us again!"

"I wish no better," said he, with a pringling in the eyes at this hearty
greeting.

"Well said, lad!" cried big John. "We three shall to the wars together,
and the devil may fly away with the Abbot of Beaulieu! But your feet
and hosen are all besmudged. Hast been in the water, or I am the more
mistaken."

"I have in good sooth," Alleyne answered, and then as they journeyed
on their way he told them the many things that had befallen him, his
meeting wit