Right across his direction, at a little distance, there jutted out from the stone wall a hedge which lack of care had let grow into a screen of low, sprawling trees. It slanted down leftward to where a gap would mark a field entrance; beyond, a slow trickle of smoke ran up the blue to signal breakfast. Rodvard, deciding what he would do if he were hunter instead of hunted, found more than good the argument against harborage so near the villa. He climbed over the wall again to wipe his streaming nose with a burdock leaf, whose bitter juice stung his lips, and perceiving that he left less marked traces in the ground on that side, stayed. The overgrown hedge proved to line a deep-cut track that in one direction wound down toward the main road past the villa. Beyond that track was true forest of old trunks and heavy underbrush. It was surely a good place to seek concealment, but Rodvard was ignorant of how far it might run or what it led to, and with illness galloping through his veins, felt he must have shelter early, so murmuring half aloud to himself that he might as well die in hot blood as in cold rheum, he turned up the track toward the cottage-smoke. The building was more prosperous than most in the country, with a barn outside, and two complete windows under the thatch-edge. No one answered his knock; as he pushed open the door, a child’s squall was sounding with irritable monotony from a trundle-bed on the right, and a woman who had been doing something at a table before the fireplace on the left turned to face him. She was bent and dirty; her face was older than her figure. “What do you want?” she demanded. “A place to rest, if I can,” said Rodvard, “and perhaps something to eat.” He crossed the room and came down weak-kneed on a stool by the fireplace corner. The lined face held no sympathy as her eyes swept down the detail of his torn, mudstained clothes and lingered for a tick at the servant’s badge on his breast. “This is not an inn,” she said sourly. “Madame, I am unwell. I can pay.” He fumbled at the waist-pouch. “This is not an inn,” she repeated, then spun on her heel, took rapid steps to where the child in its bed still bawled, and administered it a severe clout on the side of the head. “Will you be quiet?” The cries sank to whimpers. She came to stand looking down at Rodvard.