ned faces, but they clutched greedily at the coins, peering
questioningly at him, and champing with their animal jaws. Here and
there amid the brushwood the travellers saw the rude bundle of
sticks which served them as a home--more like a fowl's nest than the
dwelling-place of man. Yet why should they build and strive, when the
first adventurer who passed would set torch to their thatch, and when
their own feudal lord would wring from them with blows and curses the
last fruits of their toil? They sat at the lowest depth of human misery,
and hugged a bitter comfort to their souls as they realized that they
could go no lower. Yet they had still the human gift of speech, and
would take council among themselves in their brushwood hovels, glaring
with bleared eyes and pointing with thin fingers at the great widespread
chateaux which ate like a cancer into the life of the country-side. When
such men, who are beyond hope and fear, begin in their dim minds to see
the source their woes, it may be an evil time for those who have wronged
them. The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can
he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair. High and strong the chateaux,
lowly and weak the brushwood hut; but God help the seigneur and his lady
when the men of the brushwood set their hands to the work of revenge!

Through such country did the party ride for eight or it might be nine
miles, until the sun began to slope down in the west and their shadows
to stream down the road in front of them. Wary and careful they must
be, with watchful eyes to the right and the left, for this was no man's
land, and their only passports were those which hung from their belts.
Frenchmen and Englishmen, Gascon and Provencal, Brabanter, Tardvenu,
Scorcher, Flayer, and Free Companion, wandered and struggled over the
whole of this accursed district. So bare and cheerless was the outlook,
and so few and poor the dwellings, that Sir Nigel began to have fears as
to whether he might find food and quarters for his little troop. It was
a relief to him, therefore, when their narrow track opened out upon a
larger road, and they saw some little way down it a square white house
with a great bunch of holly hung out at the end of a stick from one of
the upper windows.

"By St. Paul!" said he, "I am right glad; for I had feared that we might
have neither provant nor herbergage. Ride on, Alleyne, and tell this
inn-keeper that an English knight with his party