Jean gave him an assumed name, said he was a merchant, and offered to sell the earl his horse, but they could not agree upon the terms. They continued conversing together during the rest of the journey. As they proceeded they encountered a shower of rain, which wetted the earl, who was fashionably and thinly clothed. Jean smiled at the impatience with which he seemed to bear this mishap, and when asked to tell the cause of his mirth, said, “If I were a rich man, like you, I should always carry a house with me, so that I could go into it when the rain came, and not get my clothes dirtied and wet.” The earl and his followers set Jean down for a fool, and looked forward to be made merry by him. Soon afterwards they came to the banks of a river, into which the earl rode, without first ascertaining if it were fordable, and he was carried away by the stream, and only saved from drowning by a fisherman in a boat. The rest of the company found a ford, where they passed the river without danger. The earl’s clothes had now been completely soaked in the water, and, as his baggage-horses were too far in the rear, he made one of his knights strip, and give him his dry clothes, and left him to make the best of his wet ones. “If I were as rich, and had so many men, as you,” said Jean, laughing again, “I would not be exposed to misfortunes of this kind, for I would carry a bridge with me.” The earl and his retinue were merry again, at what they supposed to be the folly of their travelling companion. They were now near Oxford, and Jean took his leave of the earl of Gloucester. We learn, in the course of the story, that all that Jean meant by the house, was that the earl ought to have had at hand a good cloak and cape to cover his fine clothes in case of rain; and that, by the bridge, he intended to intimate that he ought to have sent some of his men to ascertain the depth of the river before he went into it!