Then he hid himself under the grass as before.
An old man entered, with a large two-pronged hay fork in his hand.
'They will have stolen my cart, I'll be bound!' he said aloud.
He looked suspiciously around, but gave a grunt of satisfaction upon seeing the cart.
Approaching it, he was about to plunge his fork into the grass, when Sir Hubert sprang up, caught hold of the tool and wrenched it from his grasp.
'Your pardon, master,' said the knight hastily to the man. 'But I have placed something in your cart which you might unwittingly have damaged had you plunged your fork into it.'
'Cannot a man do as he likes in his own shed?' cried the old countryman. 'And who art thou,' he demanded, 'and what business hast thou here?'
'I am Sir Hubert Blair, of Harpton Hall, in Sussex. I was travelling in these parts with but a few retainers, when I met with a lady and her servants set upon by roughs and in danger of their lives. I carried the lady on my own horse across the fields until a mischance happened to my horse in leaping the last fence before we came to the wood close by. He fell down on his knees, throwing us off; the lady fainted and I carried her through the wood, and then in here. She is in your cart.'
I sat up in the cart, smiling at the old farmer's astonishment.
'Well, well,' he said, leaning on his fork and looking hard at me. 'These are troublous times! Vagabonds roam the country, and we never know what they will be up to, and a knight and a lady hide in an old cart-shed. The King, God bless him, is young and not by any means strong, but it is to be hoped he and Parliament will do something to make the highways safer.'