There were deeps in the forest where a hundred men could hide and never be stumbled on for weeks together. Thieves and outlaws who knew the ways could travel north, south, east, and west, and never be seen by woodward or forester. Moreover, these trailbastons and broken men left the deer alone, for they themselves were part of the wild and the forest was their harbour, and if no deer were slain they themselves were less likely to be hunted. Now there were forest lodges and foresters at Pippinford, Hindleape, Broadstone, and Comedean, as well as at the White Lodge of the Master Forester; but none of these men of the greenwood and the heather had any knowledge of the queer gentry who were lodged among the hollies of Blackbottom Gill. The holly wood was itself hidden in a great wood of oaks and beeches, and the Polecat, who knew every ride and every path, and the spots, too, where there were no paths, had served as guide to these strangers. The Polecat had lived all his life in the forests, thieving, cheating, robbing when a safe chance offered. He could “burr” like a goat-sucker and scream like a jay, tell the age of a deer from its slot and its dung, and judge just how high the pheasants would be roosting on a certain night. The Polecat had hunted in all the forests in Hampshire, Sussex, and Surrey, and he would slip from one to the other if it happened that the nose of the Law had smelt spilt blood. In Blackbottom Gill five figures were grouped before a fire in the thick of the gloom of the hollies. The fire had been built in a recess grubbed out of the side of a bank, and a screen of boughs built round it, so that its light should not be seen. And since it was night the smoke did not concern them. They smothered the fire before dawn. Father Merlin sat on a wallet stuffed with grass, his grey cowl over his head, the girdle of his grey habit unbuttoned. He had taken off his sandals and was stretching out his brown feet to the fire. Over against him, on a pile of dead bracken, sat Guy the Stallion, a handsome, tawdry, swashing sworder with a red head and fiery eyes and a fierce little peaked beard. At the other end of the half circle a lean man with a swarthy, gloating face was cleaning his nails with a holly twig, and men called him Jack Straw. In the centre sat John Ball, the mad priest of Kent, staring at the fire, bemused, lips moving silently, eyes seeing visions. Half lying on a sheep-skin and poking the fire with a charred stick, Big Blanche, the singing-woman, listened to Jack Straw and Guy the Stallion disputing over some point of policy. The soldier spoke in fierce, characteristic jerks, as though he were making cuts with a sword. “Let them begin with a little killing. I know a trick or two to make men’s blood boil. Let them warm to it, and in a month there will be no gentles left in the land to trouble us. I am a man of the sword, and what I know of war is as much as Du Guesclin or Knowles could carry.”