Swiftly as he went, however, he could not escape the curse of the four blessed evangelists which the mendicant howled behind him.
So dreadful are his execrations that the frightened lad thrust his fingers into his ear-holes, and ran until the fellow was but a brown smirch upon the yellow road.
Further on, at the edge of the woodland, he came upon a chapman and his wife, who sat upon a fallen tree.

He had put his pack down as a table, and the two of them were devouring a great pasty, and washing it down with some drink from a stone jar.

The chapman broke a rough jest as he passed, and the woman called shrilly to Alleyne to come and join them, on which the man, turning suddenly from mirth to wrath, began to belabor her with his cudgel.

Alleyne hastened on, lest he make more mischief, and his heart was heavy as lead within him.

Look where he would, he seemed to see nothing but injustice and violence and the hardness of man to man.
But even as he brooded sadly over it and pined for the sweet peace of the Abbey, he came on an open space dotted with holly bushes, where was the strangest sight that he had yet chanced upon.