I peered at the bundle Lei had thrust on me. I fingered it. In a moment I was feverishly pulling my tunic over my head, tearing at it in cursing panic as it caught in my hair, pulling on the tights, the shirt, not bothering to do it up, only the jerkin left now, I yanked it on over the shirt while I pushed my feet into the straw to stir it up round my discarded tunic.

Were the sounds going past—?

No.

Well, they wouldn’t have omitted my benefactress’s outhouse—My heart nearly stopped as they all entered.

My eyes were by now used to the gloom and I could recognize separate figures.

There were several of the older girls, my benefactress drooping as if with fatigue and apprehension, Turg looking bullnecked with a big stick in his hand, three large men standing very upright and commanding and looking round, by the movement of their silhouetted heads, with an air of authority.

“No one here,” said one of them in a town voice.

“I’m sure she’d hide here,” insisted one of the girls, and the rest shrilled around, reiterating that this was the surest place I’d come.

“No sign,” said another of the pursuers, after a lot of trampling about and poking had gone on.

They all turned to go out. I felt the relief flow from the woman’s figure.

“Wait—!” cried the flattest-faced girl. “What be that?

There’s a little cubby-hole—!’* and she ran at me, stooping and pointing.

I kept very still, not even breathing, but as they all stooped and peered the glimmer of my face must have met them.

“There!” yelled someone and there was a sudden cacophony of shrieks and whoops. Turg with the stick ran forward.

I rose, shaking myself of the clinging straw, and sauntered out. There was a falling aside, a stilling of the clamour. It was dark, but they could all see my long legs, the short jerkin. I went forward between them. “Be you a’wanting me?” I said. “I were having a snooze before going out to the hens.”

It was as phoney as it could be but it wasn’t what they’d been expecting, so they did not at first notice the false ring. I had strolled nearly to the door when the biggest girl, probing noticed my tunic in the straw and gave a piercing scream as full as I hope never to hear again of the lynching-lust they had worked up in themselves. “It’s her, it’s her!” she screamed. I bent nearly double, charged the man before me, butted my head in his stomach, leapt over him and out through the doorway.

I tore down the slope as hard as I could pelt.