helmet, and carried neither bill, sword, nor dagger. He seemed by no
means ill-at-ease, however, but was laughing and talking with the men
who stood near him.

Above the heads of the crowd, and now slowly working towards the
cross, was a banner on a high-raised cross-pole, a picture of a man
and woman half-clad in skins of beasts seen against a background of
green trees, the man holding a spade and the woman a distaff and
spindle rudely done enough, but yet with a certain spirit and much
meaning; and underneath this symbol of the early world and man's first
contest with nature were the written words:

When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?


The banner came on and through the crowd, which at last opened where
we stood for its passage, and the banner-bearer turned and faced the
throng and stood on the first step of the cross beside me.

A man followed him, clad in a long dark-brown gown of coarse woollen,
girt with a cord, to which hung a "pair of beads" (or rosary, as we
should call it to-day) and a book in a bag. The man was tall and
big-boned, a ring of dark hair surrounded his priest's tonsure; his
nose was big but clear cut and with wide nostrils; his shaven face
showed a longish upper lip and a big but blunt chin; his mouth was big
and the lips closed firmly; a face not very noteworthy but for his
grey eyes well opened and wide apart, at whiles lighting up his whole
face with a kindly smile, at whiles set and stern, at whiles resting
in that look as if they were gazing at something a long way off, which