His heart fairly jumped within him when at last, in the mid-afternoon, he saw from a hill a great congregation of houses and steeples, which he knew must be Nottingham. He started down the hill on the run, though his knees were smiting together with his long fast. He thought he could keep up the pace clear to the gates of the town, but a troublesome stone got into his shoe, so presently he had to pause and sit down under a hedge to look to it. As he was pulling on the shoe again a man passing by bade him good day, and Hugh, seeing there were houses within call, so he need not fear a second assault, entered into talk with him: “Yonder’s Nottingham, is it not?” “O’ course,” answered the other, proportioning his courtesy to the state of Hugh’s jacket. “How do you like having a king lie so near?” Hugh laughed for the sheer happiness that was in him. “Ill enough,” growled the other, “wi’ his swaggering ruffians breaking our fields and kissing our wenches. Praise Heaven they be gone now.” “Gone?” Hugh echoed blankly. “Ay, his Majesty and the whole crew of his rakehelly followers went packing westward three days back.” CHAPTER IV TO HORSE AND AWAY If Hugh Gwyeth had been a few years older he might perhaps have cursed his ill fortune; if he had been a few years younger he would assuredly have put his head down on his knees and wept; as it was, being neither man nor child, he blinked his eyelids rapidly and forced a weak grin, then asked: “There’s a road that runs west from Nottingham, is there not, friend? Perhaps then there is some cross-way from here by which I may reach it?” The man delayed long enough to give full information about a path, a stile, a meadow, and an ancient right of way, which Hugh checked off mechanically. But after the man had passed on he still sat a time staring at the distant roofs of Nottingham and blinking fast.