the other end of the stretch of road and drew near at a swinging trot
with plenty of clash of metal. The man soon came up to me, but paid
me no more heed than throwing me a nod. He was clad in armour of
mingled steel and leather, a sword girt to his side, and over his
shoulder a long-handled bill-hook.

His armour was fantastic in form and well wrought; but by this time I
was quite used to the strangeness of him, and merely muttered to
myself, "He is coming to summon the squire to the leet;" so I turned
toward the village in good earnest. Nor, again, was I surprised at my
own garments, although I might well have been from their unwontedness.
I was dressed in a black cloth gown reaching to my ankles, neatly
embroidered about the collar and cuffs, with wide sleeves gathered in
at the wrists; a hood with a sort of bag hanging down from it was on
my head, a broad red leather girdle round my waist, on one side of
which hung a pouch embroidered very prettily and a case made of hard
leather chased with a hunting scene, which I knew to be a pen and ink
case; on the other side a small sheath-knife, only an arm in case of
dire necessity.

Well, I came into the village, where I did not see (nor by this time
expected to see) a single modern building, although many of them were
nearly new, notably the church, which was large, and quite ravished my
heart with its extreme beauty, elegance, and fitness. The chancel of
this was so new that the dust of the stone still lay white on the
midsummer grass beneath the carvings of the windows. The houses were
almost all built of oak frame-work filled with cob or plaster well
whitewashed; though some had their lower stories of rubble-stone, with
their windows and doors of well-moulded freestone. There was much
curious and inventive carving about most of them; and though some were