me and bushes stretched forth little, thorny fingers
that caught my garments as if to hinder me from my purpose. But I
brushed them aside with my scarred arms or beat them down with my heavy
staff, o'er-leaping hedge and ditch and fallen tree until I reached the
highway, and even as I came there a distant clock chimed the hour of
ten. I quickened my pace, twirling my staff as I went, so that the two
or three wayfarers I chanced to meet drew from my neighbourhood and
eyed me mightily askance. Having gone thus some mile or so, I came to
a wall that bordered the road, a high and mossy wall, and following
this, to a pair of gates set well back from the highway, with pillars
of stone each surmounted by a couchant leopard carved in the stone.
Now these gates were of iron, very lofty and strong and fast shut, but
besides these was a smaller gate or postern of wood hard by the
gatehouse where stood a lusty fellow in fair livery, picking his teeth
with a straw and staring at the square toes of his shoes. Hearing me
approach he glanced up and, frowning, shook his head and waved me away.

"Here's no road for the likes o' you!" said he while I was yet at some
distance. "Off wi' you!" Howbeit, seeing I still advanced he clapped
to the gate, and letting fall the bar, cursed me roundly through the
grille.

"I would see Sir Richard Brandon!" says I.

"Then ye can't--nowise. So be off and be danged!"

"Open the gate!" says I.

"Be hanged for a murderous-looking rogue, a lousy thief, a wastrel and
a hangdog knave!" says he all in a breath.

"All true enough!" says I. "And now, open the gate!"

"Be danged for a prigging gipsy--'A Gad! I'll have ye clapped i' the
pillory for a black-visaged clapper-claw!"

"Unbar!" says I, "Or it shall go plaguy ill wi' you when I come in."

At this he spat upon me through the grille and chuckled. Now, glancing
about, I espied a stone hard by about the bigness of a man's head and,
laying by my staff, I wrenched the stone from where it lay and, raising
it aloft, hove it with all my strength; whereon the gate crashed open
so suddenly as to catch the fellow a buffet that laid him sprawling on
his back, and as he strove to rise I pinned him down with my staff and
kicked him heartily.

"And now," says I, "up with you and bring me to your master."

But or ever he could do aught but groan and rub his hurts, I heard the
sound of approaching hoof-strokes and, turning, beheld a lady bravely
mo