If, in the three hundred years since they had quarrelled about a pony, the Prides and the Furzeys had remained in Oakley, it was for the very good reason that there were few more pleasant places to live. If they had had other quarrels about Forest matters down the generations - as they surely must have done - these were buried and forgotten. The Prides, by and large, still thought the Furzeys a little slow and the Furzeys still considered the Prides a bit pleased with themselves; although whether, after centuries of intermarriage, these perceptions had any validity it would be hard to say. One thing, however, which Stephen Pride and anyone else could have agreed upon was that Gabriel Furzey was an obstinate man.

'Suit yourself,' said Pride and went on his way.

The reason for his visit to the green was that young Alice Albion was there.

If there was one thing that had changed scarcely at all in the New Forest since the days of the Conqueror it was the common rights of the forest folk. Given their smallholdings and the poverty of much of the soil, this continuity was natural: the exercise of common rights was still the only way in which the local economy could work.

There were chiefly four, by name. The right of Pasture - of turning out animals to graze in the king's forest; of Turbary - an allowance of turves, cut for fuel; of Mast - the turning out of pigs in September to eat the green acorns; and of Estovers - the taking of underwood for fuel. These were the four; although there were also some customary rights to marl, for enriching your land, and of cutting bracken as bedding for livestock.

The system by which these ancient rights were allocated, like ancient common law, was often complex and they might attach to an individual cottage; but it had been the custom to consider them as belonging to each landowner, who would claim them on behalf of himself and his tenants. The estate under which both Stephen Pride and Gabriel Furzey came belonged to the Albions. And since it would all, one day, belong to her, it was Alice, that morning, whom her father had sent, together with his steward, to collect some important information.