“N-no doubt,” the peddler made reply.
For a little while they sat silent, and the soldier laid a fresh bough on the blaze, for that the night was crisp and all these fellows were ragged and brier-torn.
Then said Haukyn the beggar, gloomily: “After to-morrow is the beginning of the Fair.”
“Small joy to such as we be,” snapped Nicholas Bendebowe.
“M-methought 't was the charité of Chester Fair th-that all men might gather there whether outlaw or-or-or runaway villein, and no one should l-l-lay hands on them while the Fair endured,” the peddler queried.
“Yea, 't is so,” assented Symme. “But what boots it me that I may go within Chester wall, if I must go empty-handed? The Rows are lined with spies that hale a man to the court of pie powder if he but stroke with his finger the furred edge of a hood that 's to sell. 'T were against reason to think a man will keep his hands off in midst of plenty.”
“B-but Haukyn 's a b-beggar only, he may ply his trade,” said the peddler.
“Haukyn does not ply his trade in Chester,” the beggar answered for himself. “If he cannot go in to buy like 's betters, he 's safest without.”
“Twenty-seven pearls,” mused Nicholas; and Symme and Haukyn sighed.
The peddler looked across the blaze of the fire to where Calote lay, a little way off at the foot of a tree, asleep. On the ground beside her was the bag with the horn in it, and the string went round her slim body.