close to the gaffer's chair, and seemed to be in waiting on the
company: she was clad in a close-fitting gown of bright blue cloth,
with a broad silver girdle daintily wrought, round her loins, a rose
wreath was on her head and her hair hung down unbound; the gaffer
grumbled a few words to her from time to time, so that I judged he was
her grandfather.

The men all looked up as we came into the room, my mate leading me by
the hand, and he called out in his rough, good-tempered voice, "Here,
my masters, I bring you tidings and a tale; give it meat and drink
that it may be strong and sweet."

"Whence are thy tidings, Will Green?" said one.

My mate grinned again with the pleasure of making his joke once more
in a bigger company: "It seemeth from heaven, since this good old lad
hath no master," said he.

"The more fool he to come here," said a thin man with a grizzled
beard, amidst the laughter that followed, "unless he had the choice
given him between hell and England."

"Nay," said I, "I come not from heaven, but from Essex."

As I said the word a great shout sprang from all mouths at once, as
clear and sudden as a shot from a gun. For I must tell you that I
knew somehow, but I know not how, that the men of Essex were gathering
to rise against the poll-groat bailiffs and the lords that would turn
them all into villeins again, as their grandfathers had been. And the
people was weak and the lords were poor; for many a mother's son had