Telleth How I Met One Adam Penfeather

I awoke to find the waggon at a standstill and Master Trueman watching me with a scowl the while his plump fingers toyed lovingly with his whip-stock; but as I roused, this hand crept up to finger his several chins.

"Yonder lieth Lamberhurst!" quoth he sulkily, and nodded where, in the valley below, was a village with a green wherein was a placid pool shaded by trees; and about this green stood white-walled cottages, many of them bowered in roses or honeysuckle to the very thatch (right pleasant to the eye), while beyond these again rose gables of barns or the pointed roofs of oasthouses. "Lamberhurst!" says Trueman again; whereon, having yawned and stretched myself, I clambered down into the road.

"Well?" I questioned, seeing how he watched me, triple chin in hand.

"Well," quoth he stoutly, "I be wondering what the likes o' you should be wanting wi' the likes o' Sir Richard Brandon o' Shene?"

"Nought but this," says I, shaking the hay from my tattered cloak, "I am come to watch him die, and the manner of it shall mayhap be something slow and painful!" and speaking, I clenched my right hand to a sunburnt fist. Now looking on this clutching hand, Trueman blinked and, saying no word, whipped his horses and the heavy wain rumbled and creaked on its way. But, when he had gone some distance, he grinned at me over his shoulder and called something whereof I caught the words "labour lost." For a moment I was minded to run after and demand his meaning; howbeit, in a little, I turned and went down the hill very full of thought.