Meanwhile Master Thomas Marsh and his man Ralph were threading the devious paths--then, as now, most pseudonymously dignified with the name of roads--that wound between Marston Hall and the frontier of Romney Marsh. Their progress was comparatively slow; for, though the brown mare was as good a roadster as a man might back and the gelding no mean nag of his hands, yet the tracks, rarely traversed save by the rude wains of the day, miry in the 'bottoms, ' and covered with loose and rolling stones on the higher grounds, rendered barely passable the perpetual alternation of hill and valley.