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278 are as a squire and as lusty an archer as ever passed down the highway from Bordeaux, while I am still the same old Samkin Aylward, with never a change, save that I have a few more sins on my soul and a few less crowns in my pouch. But I have never heard yet, John, what the reason was why you should come out of Beaulieu.'

'There were seven reasons,' said John, thoughtfully. 'The first of them was that they threw me out.'

'Ma foi! camarade, to the devil with the other six! That is enough for me and for thee also. I can see that they are very wise and discreet folk at Beaulieu. Ah! mon ange, what have you in the pipkin?'

'It is milk, worthy sir,' answered the peasant-maid, who stood by the door of a cottage with a jug in her hand. 'Would it please you, gentles, that I should bring you out three horns of it?'

'Nay, ma petite, but here is a two-sous piece for thy kindly tongue and for the sight of thy pretty face. Ma foi! but she has a bonne mine. I have a mind to bide and speak with her.'

'Nay, nay, Aylward,' cried Alleyne. 'Sir Nigel will await us, and he in haste.'

'True, true, camarade! Adieu, ma chérie! mon cœur est toujours à toi. Her mother is a well-grown woman also. See where she digs by the wayside. Ma foi! the riper fruit is ever the sweeter. Bon jour, ma belle dame! God have you in His keeping! Said Sir Nigel where he would await us?'

'At Marmande or Aiguillon. He said that we could not pass him, seeing that there is but the one road.'

'Aye, and it is a road that I know as I know the Midhurst parish butts,' quoth the bowman. 'Thirty times have I journeyed it, forward and backward, and by the twang of string! I am wont to come back this way more laden than I went. I have carried all that I had into France in a wallet, and it hath taken four sumpter mules to carry it back again. God's benison on the man who first turned his hand