en somehow I got up over the dyke, which is low there and
was not guarded as then, and in a nook I lay still till morning came.
And there I let myself be found by one of the warders, and when he
kicked me and challenged me, I told him what I would as to myself, and
he trowed it, and he brought me to his fellows, who, a five of them,
were cooking their breakfast, and they gave me victual and bade me
play and sing for their disport, and I did so, and pleased them.
Thereafter one of them took me along with him toward the west side of
the dyke, and I played and sang; and so, to make a long story short, I
worked round the dyke that day till I was come to the south side of
the leaguer, and there I lay that night in good entertainment; but on
the morrow I went on my way, and before evening I had come back again
to the north-west, just where I had started from. There I fell in with
the man-at-arms who had kicked me up the morning before, and he fell
to speech with me, and showed me many things, and amongst the others
the great bastide wherein, said he, the Baron of Deepdale was lodged,
and that it was little guarded, which mattered nothing by day, but by
night he deemed it something rash of the Baron to suffer so few men of
his anigh him.

"Now while we spake together thus there was a stir about us, and we
and others rose up from the grass where we were lying, and lo it was
the Baron who was come amongst us, so we all did him reverence. He was
a dark man, rather little than big, but wiry and hard-bitten; keen and
eager of face, yet was there something lordly about his bearing. As
luck would have it he came straight to where we stood together, and
stayed to look upon me as something unwonted to him, for I was wholly
unarmed, save for a little knife in my girdle; and I was clad in a
black gown and a cotehardy of green sprigged with tinsel, and had my
fiddle and bow at my back. We louted low before him, and he spake to
my friend: 'Is this big fellow a minstrel?' 'Yea, lord,' said the
other. Said the Baron: 'Looking at his inches, 't is a pity of him
that he hath not jack and sallet and a spear over his shoulder. How
sayest thou, carle; what if I were to set thee in the forefront of the
press amongst the very knighthood?' 'Noble lord,' quoth I, 'I fear me
that if I came within push of spear thou wouldst presently see me
running, so long are my legs. I am a big man, so please you great
lord, but I have the heart of a hare in me.' He