"Lord De Aldithely is a Norman," remarked Hugo. "So also am I."
"Ay," rejoined Humphrey, "but all Normans are not alike bad. Thou art not the king, moreover, nor is my lord, who is an honest man and standeth bravely by the people, and is opposed to murder and robbery. Therefore is he fled, and therefore is our young lord Josceline in danger, and therefore are we skulking and hiding and leading the king's men this chase. The times be evil; and who knoweth what shall amend them?"
Hugo did not reply. His eye had caught sight of the flash of sunlight on steel down the valley, and he pointed it out to Humphrey.
"Up! up!" cried Humphrey. "Up into yon spreading oak at the edge of the vale. There shall we be concealed, and yet see all."
"They come from toward Doncaster, do they not?" asked Hugo when they were safely out of sight among the branches.
"Ay," answered Humphrey. "Nor was it for naught that I did sleep too sound to dream last night, else might we have been on the way to Doncaster, and so, perchance, have met them."
The party drew nearer, and soon the keen eyes of Humphrey and Hugo resolved them into three men-at-arms led by Walter Skinner.
"Three soldiers and a king's man to take a boy and a man!" laughed
Humphrey. "It must be that they have a good opinion of our bravery."
"Or of thy cunning," said Hugo, to whom Humphrey had a short while before revealed all that had befallen him in Ferrybridge.
"Oh, ay," answered Humphrey, complacently. "I have my share, no doubt. A man doth not live forty years with treachery on all sides of him and learn nothing. My head had been off my shoulders ere this, had not some measure of cunning done its part to keep it on. They will beat up the whole forest hereabout for us, I doubt not. If I get a good dream to-night, we go on to-morrow."