this journey."

"They prey upon the pilgrims who pass along the Winchester Road,
and they are well loved by the folk in these parts, for they rob
none of them and have an open hand for all who will help them."

"It is right easy to have an open hand with the money that you
have stolen," said Nigel; "but I fear that they will not try to
rob two men with swords at their girdles like you and me, so we
shall have no profit from them."

They had passed over the wild moors and had come down now into the
main road by which the pilgrims from the west of England made
their way to the national shrine at Canterbury. It passed from
Winchester, and up the beautiful valley of the Itchen until it
reached Farnham, where it forked into two branches, one of which
ran along the Hog's Back, while the second wound to the south and
came out at Saint Catherine's Hill where stands the Pilgrim
shrine, a gray old ruin now, but once so august, so crowded and so
affluent. It was this second branch upon which Nigel and Aylward
found themselves as they rode to Guildford.

No one, as it chanced, was going the same way as themselves, but
they met one large drove of pilgrims returning from their journey
with pictures of Saint Thomas and snails' shells or little leaden
ampullae in their hats and bundles of purchases over their
shoulders. They were a grimy, ragged, travel-stained crew, the
men walking, the women borne on asses. Man and beast, they limped
along as if it would be a glad day when they saw their homes once
more. These and a few beggars or minstrels, who crouched among