“Have you lost your way, my pretty mistress?” said a voice close to them, and turning round hastily they saw a peasant woman with a large basket on her arm.

“No,” said Cicely courteously, “we have only come out to take the air before breakfast.”

“I crave pardon,” said the woman, curtseying, “the pretty lady belongs to the great folk down yonder.  Would she look at my poor wares?  Here are beads and trinkets of the goodly stones, pins and collars, bracelets and eardrops, white, yellow, and purple,” she said, uncovering her basket, where were arranged various ornaments made of Derbyshire spar.

“We have no money, good woman,” said Cicely, rising to return, vaguely uncomfortable at the woman’s eye, which awoke some remembrance of Tibbott the huckster, and the troubles connected with her.

“Yea, but if my young mistress would only bring me in to the Great Lady there, I know she would buy of me my beads and bracelets, of give me an alms for my poor children.  I have five of them, good young lady, and they lie naked and hungry till I can sell my few poor wares, and the yeomen are so rough and hard.  They would break and trample every poor bead I have in pieces rather than even let my Lord hear of them.  But if even my basket could be carried in and shown, and if the good Earl heard my sad tale, I am sure he would give license.”

“He never does!” said Diccon, roughly; “hold off, woman, do not hang on us, or I’ll get thee branded for a vagabond.”

The woman put her knuckles into her eyes, and wailed out that it was all for her poor children, and Cicely reproved him for his roughness, and as the woman kept close behind them, wailing, moaning, and persuading, the boy and girl were wrought upon at last to give her leave to wait outside the gate of the inn garden, while they saw whether it was possible to admit her or her basket.

But before they reached the gate, they saw a figure beyond it, scanning the hill eagerly.  They knew him for their father even before he shouted to them, and, as they approached, his voice was displeased:  “How now, children; what manners are these?”

“We have only been on the hillside, sweet father,” said Cis, “Diccon and I together.  We thought no harm.”

“This is not Sheffield Chase, Cis, and thou art no more a child, but a maiden who needs to be discreet, above all in these times.  Whom did I see following you?”

“A poor woman, whom—­Ha, where is she?” exclaimed Cis, suddenly perceiving that the woman seemed to have vanished.

“A troublesome begging woman who beset us with her wares,” said Diccon, “and would give us no peace, praying that we would get them carried in to the Queen and her ladies, whining about her children till she made Cis soft-hearted.  Where can she have hidden herself?”

The man who was stationed as sentry at the gate said he had seen the woman come over the brow of the hill with Master Diccon and Mistress Cicely, but that as they ran forward to meet Captain Talbot she had disappeared amid the rocks and brushwood.