Leofric's eyes were wide with amaze. "Surely those fellows were not clerks from Oxford?" "Like enow they were. There be a strange medley of folks calling themselves by that name that frequent the streets and lanes of the city, or congregate without the walls in hovels and booths. Some of these, having neither means to live nor such characters as render them fit subjects to be helped from any of the chests, take to the woods for a livelihood, shooting the King's bucks or falling unawares upon travellers. Some clerks run to the woods for refuge after some wild outbreak of lawlessness. There be many wild, lawless knaves habited in the gown of the clerk and wearing the tonsure. Are ye twain from Oxford yourselves, or bound thither, since ye seem little acquaint with the ways of the place?" Explanations were quickly made, and the two elder youths, who might have been eighteen and nineteen years old perhaps, suggested that they should finish the journey together on foot, lading themselves with the contents of the canoe, but leaving it behind in the alders, to be fetched away some other time if wanted. They were near to the river by this time, and the lads quickly fetched their goods, glad enough to travel into the city in company with two comrades who plainly knew the place and the life right well. They were very open about themselves. The name of one was Hugh le Barbier, and he was the son of an esquire who held a post in the house of one of the retainers of the Earl of Leicester--"the great De Montfort," as the youth proudly dubbed him. His companion was Gilbert Barbeck, son of a rich merchant. His home was in the south of England, but he had been travelling with Hugh, during an interlude in their studies. In those days regular vacations were unknown. Men might stay for years at the University, hearing lectures all the time through; or they might betake themselves elsewhere, and return again and resume their studies, without reproof. The collegiate system was as yet unknown, though its infancy dates from a period only a little later. But there was a Chancellor of the University (if such it could be called), and learned men from all lands had congregated there; lectures in Arts and also in the sciences were regularly given, and degrees could be taken by those who could satisfy the authorities that they had been through the appointed courses of lectures, and were competent in their turn to teach. The religious houses had been the pioneers in this movement, but now there was a reaction in favour of more secular teaching. The monks had some ado to hold their own, and obtain as many privileges as were accorded to others; and friction was constantly arising.