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away.’
    Even in that extremity my good strong body served me; lying prone, even in despair, had restored me. Standing up, without having to lift Kate, I found myself steadier than I could have hoped. Turning my head from side to side like a hound, and drooling water at the mouth, I set off in thedirection from which the scent seemed strongest. A few paces brought me to a place where, in some time past, the forest trees had been felled. Where they had stood a coppice of bushes, elder and wild rose and hawthorn had grown up. Close pressed and fighting with one another, they had woven themselves into a living wall. The strong scent of herrings roasting came from its farther side. I walked along the thicket, seeking an entrance, but there was none, and the scent grew fainter. I turned back and walked the other way. The fence continued and the smell again faded. I was vastly puzzled. No house could be completely enclosed.
    I staggered to the spot where the smell was strongest and threw myself at the bushes, thrusting my way into them bodily, hacking at them with my knife in a frenzy. The last line of them gave way before my onslaught and I found myself standing at the top of a little bank, looking down upon a sight as astonishing as it was welcome. To left and right, as far as eye could see in either direction, ran a straight flat road, bordered on each side by thicket like that through which I had just forced my way. The road was thickly grassed and at the point immediately below me stood a jenny ass with her foal. Near by was a fire and over it, slung on a cross bar, the herrings. Standing guard over the whole was a little old woman with a donkey stick in her hand and an expression on her face that was at once terrified and defiant.
    ‘Keep your distance!’ she said. ‘I’ve nowt worth stealing, and if you come near I shall fetch you a clout.’
    I must have been a fearsome sight, bursting through the bushes knife in hand, the bruises of my beating turning greenish yellow, the broken places now well-scabbed, all in addition to my desperate, hungry look.
    My wits were still with me, however. I did not move, but dropped the knife so that it fell down the bank almost at her feet.
    ‘Good mother,’ I said, ‘I am no robber. We have gone astray in the forest and are like to die of hunger. Of your charity, let us eat.’ Then I remembered that I had money. ‘I am no beggar, either.’ I took out a penny and threw it after the knife.
    ‘We,’ she repeated on a questioning note. ‘How many are you?’
    ‘Myself and my wife, she is in worse case.’
    ‘All right then.’ She Stooped and picked up my knife and the penny. ‘No tricks, though. I’m old, but I’m lively.’
    I turned and pushed my way back through the gap, widening it as best I could, and walked to where I had left Kate.
    ‘Was… it true?’
    For answer I bent and lifted her. Hope had given me strength and I was able to carry her to the gap and pull her through it. The old woman was still on guard, but at the sight of Kate her manner changed.
    ‘Poor creature,’ she said, and coming forward helped me to bring Kate down the little bank and place her by the fire. Then she quickly slid the herrings from the stick, cut great slabs from a round brown loaf and said,
    ‘Lay to. And God send Grace on the food.’
    I ate as I had never eaten before, but Kate, after a bite or two, sickened again.
    ‘Poor mawther. She has clemmed over-long. Her belly is shrunk. If only…’ In her face, brown and wrinkled as a walnut, her faded eyes snapped and sparkled. ‘God be thanked,’ she said. ‘We have it!’
    She routed about amongst her belongings and found a little wooden bowl.
    ‘You must hold the donkey steady,’ she said to me. ‘She’s not been milked this way afore.’
    If ever there should come a time when dancing bears are so common that they no longer draw a crowd, an old woman, a young man and a jenny ass in milk should go the rounds. I was too anxious