Perhaps his downcast state touched Allestree a little, for he met him more kindly and spared farther jests while Hugh was mounting Bayard. “Better go to Tamworth if you are ill at ease here,” he counselled wisely. “But in any case God speed you and protect you for the sake of the innocence of you.” At this Mahone went into a fit of laughter, from which he recovered only in time to bawl a farewell that reached Hugh but faintly, as he rode out by the sentinel at the gate of Woodstead. Travelling slowly, to spare Bayard after his heavy work of the preceding day, he came about noon to a cross-road, where for a moment he hesitated: should it be north to seek Sir William’s help, or south to put himself into the provost’s hands and trust to his own innocence of ill intent to bring him clear? But he soon told himself that, if Sir William had had the power to aid, he would long ago have helped Dick Strangwayes; and, in any case, he had no will to live longer in holes and corners, as if he were indeed the murderer Peregrine had called him. Perhaps he would find friends if he went on boldly. So he jogged southward at an easy pace, so easy, indeed, that he gave up all idea of reaching Oxford that day. “And we don’t care to lie in the fields, Bayard,” he talked softly to the horse. “And we’ve not a penny to our names to hire lodgings. What say you if we swerve off to Ashcroft? Perhaps they’ll shelter us this night.” At heart he knew they would, yet, remembering how carelessly he had departed thence, he felt a little backward about presenting himself to the Widow Flemyng. His pace lagged more and more as he drew near the farm, and he might have halted short to reconsider, had not the spat of rain upon the white roadway warned him to look to the sky. There the clouds were black with storm and thunder, so, having no wish to come at last to Oxford all bedraggled, he spurred forward hastily and galloped Bayard into Ashcroft stable just as the rain began pelting down. Storm or no storm, so soon as he had delivered over the horse to Ralph’s care, he put his head down and ran for the house, where he pitched blindly in at the kitchen door. He heard a shriek from Nancy, “Preserve us! mistress, ’tis Master Burley come back,” and then the widow’s peremptory tones: “Take those boots off right where you stand, sir, else you’ll track mud over my new-sanded floor.” Hugh balanced uneasily on one foot as he obeyed, then asked meekly if he mightn’t be permitted to sit down now? “Oh, at table, is it?” questioned the widow, bustling to the nearest cupboard. “Hungry as ever, I take it?” “Always,” Hugh replied, and fetched a stool to the table against the kitchen wall, where he was presently busy with a cold capon.