other would take him in, well
and good.

He would bide with him for a time and do what he might to serve him.
If, on the other hand, he should have hardened his heart against him,
he could only go on his way and do the best he might by his skill as
a craftsman and a scrivener. At the end of a year he would be free
to return to the cloisters, for such had been his father's bequest. A
monkish upbringing, one year in the world after the age of twenty, and
then a free selection one way or the other--it was a strange course
which had been marked out for him. Such as it was, however, he had no
choice but to follow it, and if he were to begin by making a friend
of his brother he had best wait until morning before he knocked at his
dwelling.

The rude plank door was ajar, but as Alleyne approached it there came
from within such a gust of rough laughter and clatter of tongues that
he stood irresolute upon the threshold. Summoning courage, however, and
reflecting that it was a public dwelling, in which he had as much right
as any other man, he pushed it open and stepped into the common room.

Though it was an autumn evening and somewhat warm, a huge fire of heaped
billets of wood crackled and sparkled in a broad, open grate, some of
the smoke escaping up a rude chimney, but the greater part rolling out
into the room, so that the air was thick with it, and a man coming from
without could scarce catch his breath. On this fire a great cauldron
bubbled and simmered, giving forth a rich and promising smell. Seated
round it were a dozen or so folk, of all ages and conditions, who set
up such a shout as Alleyne entered that he stood peering at them through
the smoke, uncertain what this riotous greeting might portend.

"A rouse! A rouse!" cried one rough looking fellow in a tattered jerkin.
"One more round of mead or ale and the score to the last comer."

"'Tis the law of the 'Pied Merlin,'" shouted another. "Ho there, Dame
Eliza! Here is fresh custom come to the house, and not a drain for the
company."

"I will take your orders, gentles; I will assuredly take your orders,"
the landlady answered, bustling in with her hands full of leathern
drinking-cups. "What is it that you drink, then? Beer for the lads of
the forest, mead for the gleeman, strong waters for the tinker, and wine
for the rest. It is an old custom of the house, young sir. It has been
the use at the 'Pied Merlin' this many a year back that the company
should drink