eard the eels of Sowley well spoken of,
the friar sucked in his lips and hurried forward. Close at his heels
came three laborers walking abreast, with spade and mattock over their
shoulders. They sang some rude chorus right tunefully as they walked,
but their English was so coarse and rough that to the ears of a
cloister-bred man it sounded like a foreign and barbarous tongue. One
of them carried a young bittern which they had caught upon the moor, and
they offered it to Alleyne for a silver groat. Very glad he was to get
safely past them, for, with their bristling red beards and their fierce
blue eyes, they were uneasy men to bargain with upon a lonely moor.

Yet it is not always the burliest and the wildest who are the most to
be dreaded. The workers looked hungrily at him, and then jogged onwards
upon their way in slow, lumbering Saxon style. A worse man to deal with
was a wooden-legged cripple who came hobbling down the path, so weak and
so old to all appearance that a child need not stand in fear of him.
Yet when Alleyne had passed him, of a sudden, out of pure devilment, he
screamed out a curse at him, and sent a jagged flint stone hurtling past
his ear. So horrid was the causeless rage of the crooked creature, that
the clerk came over a cold thrill, and took to his heels until he was
out of shot from stone or word. It seemed to him that in this country
of England there was no protection for a man save that which lay in the
strength of his own arm and the speed of his own foot. In the cloisters
he had heard vague talk of the law--the mighty law which was higher than
prelate or baron, yet no sign could he see of it. What was the benefit
of a law written fair upon parchment, he wondered, if there were no
officers to enforce it. As it fell out, however, he had that very
evening, ere the sun had set, a chance of seeing how stern was the grip
of the English law when it did happen to seize the offender.

A mile or so out upon the moor the road takes a very sudden dip into a
hollow, with a peat-colored stream running swiftly down the centre
of it. To the right of this stood, and stands to this day, an ancient
barrow, or burying mound, covered deeply in a bristle of heather and
bracken. Alleyne was plodding down the slope upon one side, when he saw
an old dame coming towards him upon the other, limping with weariness
and leaning heavily upon a stick. When she reached the edge of the
stream she stood helpless, looking to r