me
small deed, or to relieve himself of any vow, it might be possible to
find some means of achieving it. They were both, however, grave and
elderly men, intent upon their business and with no mind for fond
wayside adventures, so Nigel quickened his pace and left them behind.

They had left Boxhill and Headley Heath upon the left, and the towers of
Reigate were rising amid the trees in front of them, when they overtook
a large, cheery, red-faced man, with a forked beard, riding upon a good
horse and exchanging a nod or a merry word with all who passed him. With
him they rode nearly as far as Bletchingley, and Nigel laughed much to
hear him talk; but always under the raillery there was much earnestness
and much wisdom in all his words. He rode at his ease about the country,
he said, having sufficient money to keep him from want and to furnish
him for the road. He could speak all the three languages of England, the
north, the middle and the south, so that he was at home with the people
of every shire and could hear their troubles and their joys. In all
parts in town and in country there was unrest, he said; for the poor
folk were weary of their masters both of the Church and State, and soon
there would be such doings in England as had never been seen before.

But above all this man was earnest against the Church its enormous
wealth, its possession of nearly one-third of the whole land of the
country, its insatiable greed for more at the very time when it claimed
to be poor and lowly. The monks and friars, too, he lashed with his
tongue: their roguish ways, their laziness and their cunning. He showed
how their wealth and that of the haughty lord must always be founded
upon the toil of poor humble Peter the Plowman, who worked and strove
in rain and cold out in the fields, the butt and laughing-stock of
everyone, and still bearing up the whole world upon his weary shoulders.
He had set it all out in a fair parable; so now as he rode he repeated
some of the verses, chanting them and marking time with his forefinger,
while Nigel and Aylward on either side of him with their heads inclined
inward listened with the same attention, but with very different
feelings--Nigel shocked at such an attack upon authority, and Aylward
chuckling as he heard the sentiments of his class so shrewdly expressed.
At last the stranger halted his horse outside the "Five Angels" at
Gatton.

"It is a good inn, and I know the ale of old," said he. "W