Said Osberne: "Speech is free to thee, Stephen." And the Eater said: "I have been out a-gates of late, for I deemed that if I might find adventures it would be for thy health." Said Osberne, laughing: "Yet maybe not for thine, Stephen. I were loth to come to Wethermel without thee." Said Stephen: "At this rate it may be long ere we come to Wethermel." "I would we might hasten the homecoming," said Osberne, knitting his brows, "but I wot not how that may be since the Baron is yet so strong." "Ah, but I have a deeming how it may be done," said Stephen: "but there is peril in it." Osberne stood up and said: "What hast thou been about, runagate?" "Master," said he, "I will tell thee. Five nights ago I did on raiment of the fashion of them beyond Deepdale, and I had with me a fiddle, and was in the manner of a minstrel, and thou wottest that I am not so evil a gut-scraper, and that I have many tales and old rhymes to hand, though I am no scald as thou art. Well, I got out a-gates a night-tide by the postern on the nook of the south-east tower, the warden whereof is a friend of mine own, and then by night and cloud I contrived it to skirt the dyke and get me about till I came north-west of our north gate, and then somehow I got up over the dyke, which is low there and was not guarded as then, and in a nook I lay still till morning came. And there I let myself be found by one of the warders, and when he kicked me and challenged me, I told him what I would as to myself, and he trowed it, and he brought me to his fellows, who, a five of them, were cooking their breakfast, and they gave me victual and bade me play and sing for their disport, and I did so, and pleased them. Thereafter one of them took me along with him toward the west side of the dyke, and I played and sang; and so, to make a long story short, I worked round the dyke that day till I was come to the south side of the leaguer, and there I lay that night in good entertainment; but on the morrow I went on my way, and before evening I had come back again to the north-west, just where I had started from. There I fell in with the man-at-arms who had kicked me up the morning before, and he fell to speech with me, and showed me many things, and amongst the others the great bastide wherein, said he, the Baron of Deepdale was lodged, and that it was little guarded, which mattered nothing by day, but by night he deemed it something rash of the Baron to suffer so few men of his anigh him.