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Exalted had beaten him then, he remembered darkly, for he had been ordained no more than a year, and as his pre-Restoration life in France had not been particularly godly, he was as yet untrained to withstand the onslaught of woes and prophets and daughters of Sion, all brought forward to prove how easily the feet can trip the soul. Since then his daily reading of the Book of Common Prayer had given him as extensive an armoury as his antagonist, but on that day he had been defeated and had retired in dudgeon: and then . . . old Gervase gave a sudden hop and skip to the astonishment of some children driving a cow along the road . . . and then the mountebank woman had come.

She had come in at the low gate, he remembered, carrying her bundle high against her shoulder. Her long shadow had run ahead of her over the grass, and her shape had been mere rags and darkness. He had felt surprised when she stopped and asked him for Exalted Harman; but he had pointed him out, and then felt curious enough to follow her. She had gone straight up to where Exalted stood with his wife and children, some twenty yards from the dancers, and had straightway thrust her bundle into his arms—"There, take your brat."