asked for a trusty messenger who should carry it up to Westminster.

"None so swift or sure," said the house steward, "as Martin Lightfoot."

Lady Godiva shook her head. "I mistrust that man," she said. "He is too
fond of my poor--of the Lord Hereward."

"He is a strange one, my lady, and no one knows whence he came, and, I
sometimes fancy, whither he may go either; but ever since my lord
threatened to hang him for talking with my young master, he has never
spoken to him, nor scarcely, indeed, to living soul. And one thing there
is makes him or any man sure, as long as he is well paid; and that is,
that he cares for nothing in heaven or earth save himself and what he can
get."

So Martin Lightfoot was sent for. He came in straight into the lady's
bedchamber, after the simple fashion of those days. He was a tall, lean,
bony man, as was to be expected from his nickname, with a long hooked
nose, a scanty brown beard, and a high conical head. His only garment was
a shabby gray woollen tunic, which served him both as coat and kilt, and
laced brogues of untanned hide. He might have been any age from twenty to
forty; but his face was disfigured with deep scars and long exposure to
the weather. He dropped on one knee, holding his greasy cap in his hand,
and looked, not at his lady's face, but at her feet, with a stupid and
frightened expression. She knew very little of him, save that her husband
had picked him up upon the road as a wanderer some five years since; and
that he had been employed as a doer of odd jobs and runner of messages,
and that was supposed, from his taciturnity and strangeness, to have
something uncanny about him.