When a man is afoot at cock-crow much may be done in the day.

If he walked fast he might yet overtake his friends ere they reached their destination.

He pushed on therefore, now walking and now running.

As he journeyed he bit into a crust which remained from his Beaulieu bread, and he washed it down by a draught from a woodland stream.
It was no easy or light thing to journey through this great forest, which was some twenty miles from east to west and a good sixteen from Bramshaw Woods in the north to Lymington in the south.

Alleyne, however, had the good fortune to fall in with a woodman, axe upon shoulder, trudging along in the very direction that he wished to go.