The times be evil; and who knoweth what shall amend
them?"
Hugo did not reply. His eye had caught sight of the flash of sunlight
on steel down the valley, and he pointed it out to Humphrey.
"Up! up!" cried Humphrey. "Up into yon spreading oak at the edge of the
vale. There shall we be concealed, and yet see all."
"They come from toward Doncaster, do they not?" asked Hugo when they
were safely out of sight among the branches.
"Ay," answered Humphrey. "Nor was it for naught that I did sleep too
sound to dream last night, else might we have been on the way to
Doncaster, and so, perchance, have met them."
The party drew nearer, and soon the keen eyes of Humphrey and Hugo
resolved them into three men-at-arms led by Walter Skinner.
"Three soldiers and a king's man to take a boy and a man!" laughed
Humphrey. "It must be that they have a good opinion of our bravery."
"Or of thy cunning," said Hugo, to whom Humphrey had a short while
before revealed all that had befallen him in Ferrybridge.
"Oh, ay," answered Humphrey, complacently. "I have my share, no doubt.
A man doth not live forty years with treachery on all sides of him and
learn nothing.
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