interspersed with forest and heath, which lies northward at the
foot of the eastern range of the Sussex downs. The time is the year
of grace twelve hundred and fifty and three; the month a cold and
seasonable January. The wild heath around is crisp with frost and
white with snow, it appears a dense solitude; away to the east lies
the town of Hamelsham, or Hailsham; to the west the downs about
Lewes; to the south, at a short distance, one sees the lofty towers
and monastic buildings of a new and thriving community, surrounded
by a broad and deep moat; to the north copse wood, brake, heath,
dell, and dense forest, in various combinations and endless
variety, as far as the lodge of Cross in Hand, so called from the
crusaders who took the sacred sign in their hands, and started for
the earthly Jerusalem not so many years agone.

Across this waste, as the dark night was falling, rode a knight and
his squire. The knight was a man of some fifty years of age, but
still strong, tall, and muscular; his dark features indicated his
southern blood, and an indescribable expression and manner told of
one accustomed to command. His face bore the traces of scars,
doubtless honourably gained; seen beneath a scarlet cap, lined with
steel, but trimmed with fur. A flexible coat of mail, so cunningly
wrought as to offer no more opposition to the movements of the
wearer than a greatcoat might nowadays, was covered with a thick
cloak or mantle, in deference to the severity of the weather; the
thighs were similarly protected by linked mail, and the hose and
boots defended by unworked plates of thin steel. In his girdle was
a dagger, and from the saddle depended, on one side, a huge
two-handed sword, on the other a gilded battle axe.

It was, in short, a knight of the olden time, who thus travelled