"Likely, likely," answered the other man, loosening his sword in the sheath; "but if he have, king Richard will burn the forest down but he'll find them; for this fellow is a great man with those he serves now-a-days." "Here, hold my horse," cried the other. "I'll get down and see;" and, dismounting, he stooped over the body, and then proceeded to examine it, commenting in broken sentences, thus--"Ay, it is he, sure enough. Stay, he can't be murdered, I think, either, for here is his purse in his pocket, and that well filled--and papers too, and a silver box of comfits, on my life. Look ye here now, his horse must have thrown him and broken his neck. No, upon my life, it's his head is broken. Here's a place at the back of his skull as soft as a Norfolk dumpling. What shall we do with him?" A short consultation then ensued, as to how they should dispose of the dead body, till at length it was agreed that the horse should be caught, the corpse flung over it, and thus carried to the neighbouring hamlet. This was effected without much trouble; and the whole scene became wild, and silent, and solitary once more. CHAPTER IV. I must now introduce the reader to a scene then very common in England, but which would now be sought for in vain--although, to some of the habits of those times a large class of people have a strong tendency to return. Round a little village green, having, as usual, its pond--the merry-making place of ducks and geese--its two or three clumps of large trees, and its two roads crossing each other in the middle, were erected several buildings of very different look and magnitude. Nearly three sides of the green were occupied by mere hovels or huts, the walls of mud, the roofs rudely thatched, and the windows of so small a size as to admit very little light into a dwelling, which, during the working hours of each weary day, saw very little of its laborious tenants. Amongst these were two larger houses, built of stone, richly ornamented, though small in size, having glazed windows, and displaying all the signs and tokens of the ecclesiastical architecture of the day, though neither of them was a church or chapel, but simply the dwelling-places of some secular priests, with a small following of male choristers, who were not permitted to inhabit any portion of the neighbouring abbey. Along the fourth side of the green, where the ground rose considerably, extended an enormously high wall, pierced in the centre with a fine old portal with two battlemented turrets, one on either side. From the middle of the green, so high was this wall and portal that nothing could be seen beyond it. But, from the opposite side, the towers and pinnacles of the abbey itself peeped up above the inclosure.