franklin on my Lord of Warwick's lands, and had once been burnt out
by Queen Margaret's men, and just as things looked up again with
him, King Edward's folk ruined all again, and slew his two sons.
When great folk play the fool, small folk pay the scot, as I din
into his Grace's ears whenever I may. A minion of the Duke of
Clarence got the steading, and poor old Martin Fulford was turned
out to shift as best he might. One son he had left, and with him he
went to the Low Countries, where they would have done well had they
not been bitten by faith in the fellow Perkin Warbeck. You've heard
of him?"

"Yea," said Ambrose; "the same who was taken out of sanctuary at
Beaulieu, and borne off to London. Father said he was marvellous
like in the face to all the kings he had ever seen hunting in the
Forest."

"I know not; but to the day of his death old Martin swore that he
was a son of King Edward's, and they came home again with the men
the Duchess of Burgundy gave Perkin--came bag and baggage, for young
Fulford had wedded a fair Flemish wife, poor soul! He left her with
his father nigh to Taunton ere the battle, and he was never heard of
more, but as he was one of the few men who knew how to fight, belike
he was slain. Thus old Martin was left with the Flemish wife and
her little one on his hands, for whose sake he did what went against
him sorely, joined himself to this troop of jugglers and players, so
as to live by the minstrelsy he had learnt in better days, while his
daughter-in-law mended and made for the company and kept them in
smart and shining trim. By the time I fell in with them his voice
was well-nigh gone, and his hand sorely shaking, but Fire-eating
Nat, the master of our troop, was not an ill-natured fellow, and the