“Sir,” I replied, “you shall not have the trouble.  This is Plover’s Barrows farm, and you are kindly welcome.  Sheep’s kidneys is for supper, and the ale got bright from the tapping.  But why do you think ill of us?  We like not to be cursed so.”

“Nay, I think no ill,” he said; “sheep’s kidneys is good, uncommon good, if they do them without burning.  But I be so galled in the saddle ten days, and never a comely meal of it.  And when they hear ‘King’s service’ cried, they give me the worst of everything.  All the way down from London, I had a rogue of a fellow in front of me, eating the fat of the land before me, and every one bowing down to him.  He could go three miles to my one though he never changed his horse.  He might have robbed me at any minute, if I had been worth the trouble.  A red mare he rideth, strong in the loins, and pointed quite small in the head.  I shall live to see him hanged yet.”

All this time he was riding across the straw of our courtyard, getting his weary legs out of the leathers, and almost afraid to stand yet.  A coarse-grained, hard-faced man he was, some forty years of age or so, and of middle height and stature.  He was dressed in a dark brown riding suit, none the better for Exmoor mud, but fitting him very differently from the fashion of our tailors.  Across the holsters lay his cloak, made of some red skin, and shining from the sweating of the horse.  As I looked down on his stiff bright head-piece, small quick eyes and black needly beard, he seemed to despise me (too much, as I thought) for a mere ignoramus and country bumpkin.

“Annie, have down the cut ham,” I shouted, for my sister was come to the door by chance, or because of the sound of a horse in the road, “and cut a few rashers of hung deer’s meat.  There is a gentleman come to sup, Annie.  And fetch the hops out of the tap with a skewer that it may run more sparkling.”

“I wish I may go to a place never meant for me,” said my new friend, now wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his brown riding coat, “if ever I fell among such good folk.  You are the right sort, and no error therein.  All this shall go in your favour greatly, when I make deposition.  At least, I mean, if it be as good in the eating as in the hearing.  ’Tis a supper quite fit for Tom Faggus himself, the man who hath stolen my victuals so.  And that hung deer’s meat, now is it of the red deer running wild in these parts?”

“To be sure it is, sir,” I answered; “where should we get any other?”

“Right, right, you are right, my son.  I have heard that the flavour is marvellous.  Some of them came and scared me so, in the fog of the morning, that I hungered for them ever since.  Ha, ha, I saw their haunches.  But the young lady will not forget—­art sure she will not forget it?”

“You may trust her to forget nothing, sir, that may tempt a guest to his comfort.”