Adam of the Road

Adam follows a crowd of people outside the fair, since he thinks the crowd may be watching a minstrel perform, and there is a chance that the minstrel might be his father. The crowd is actually watching a play in the courthouse of a church. Adam is too short to see the stage, and a man tells him that the play is “The Fall of Adam.”

Adam is determined to watch the play and climbs onto an overhanging roof of the church, letting his legs dangle over the courtyard. He watches the characters of Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit and watches the character of God banish them from the Garden of Eden. At the climax of the play, Adam leans forward eagerly and falls off the roof.

Adam wakes up in a clean, comfortable room. When he tries to look around, he gets horribly dizzy and realizes that there is a thick bandage wrapped around his head. He falls back asleep. When he wakes again, a man and a woman are standing over him. The man introduces himself as Master Walter, a parish priest, and the woman as his sister, Dame Prudence. He tells Adam that they carried him from the bottom of the wall and laid him in this room.