Think now of a stranger passing through the town by night; some constable feels suspicious and wants to arrest him; imagining himself already in prison “till the justices come down,” the man runs away instead of allowing himself to be taken. The statute has provided for his case.[228] “If they will not obey the arrest, hue and cry shall be levied upon them, and such as keep the watch shall follow with hue and cry with all the town, and the towns near, and so hue and cry shall be made from town to town until that they be taken and delivered {177} to the sheriff.”[229] A singular picture: night wraps in its shadows the crooked lanes of the unlit city; the stranger is perhaps a robber, perhaps an honest man, who has lost his way, not knowing the place; his fault is not to be within doors by curfew; he gropes his way as best he can; the watch perceives and challenges him; fearing the result he takes to his heels, and behold! the hue and cry begins, the watch runs, the town wakes up, lights appear, and one after the other the more zealous join in the chase. If the town is fortified, the postern gates have long been closed, and he will be surely taken. Scarcely can he hope to cast himself into some unshut doorway at a turning of the street, behind which he will cower, listening with trembling hand and beating heart to the watch who pass heavily along at a charging pace, followed by a crowd of furious shouters. The number of steps lessen, and the shouts become fainter, then die away, lost in the depths of the city. If the place is not important enough to be enclosed by walls, the first thought of the fugitive will be to gain the open, and then he must not fear marshes, ditches, hedges; he must know how, at a bend of the ground, to leave the high-road and profit by any place where the Statute of Winchester has been negligently applied. But for that he is lost, the constables follow, the town follows, the “cry” continues, and at the next village the scene of the start will begin over again. The inhabitants, warned by the clamour, light their lanterns, and see, they are already in the chase. Before he reaches the end of the high-street some peasant will be found on the alert, ready to bar the passage of the road to him. All have an interest in it, all have been robbed, or their friends, or relatives; {178} someone of their kin may have been wounded or murdered on the road as he returned from market. Every one has heard of such misfortunes, and feels himself personally menaced. Hence this zeal in joining the chase with the hue and cry, and the conviction that, running so hard and making so many folk run, the fugitive must be a famous brigand ready for the gibbet.[230] {179} PART II _LAY WAYFARERS_ {181} [Illustration 35. AN ADVENTURE SEEKER. (_From the MS. 2 B._ vii; _English; early Fourteenth Century_.)] INTRODUCTORY NOTE