Once there was a knight who had been riding for many days through a deep forest. All around him tree trunks as thick as cathedral pillars rose and arched high above his head. His horse picked its own way under the green vaulted canopy as the knight's feet hung loose from the stirrups and the reins lay slack in his hands. Occasionally the stillness was broken by the snapping of a stick beneath the horse's hooves, startling deer which broke cover among the bluebells.

Eventually he emerged into harsh sunlight and found himself in a stark and unfamiliar landscape of walled enclosures filled with docile sheep. Before him lay a road, a dust-grey line, undulating wearily to the horizon. The knight felt ill-at-ease in these neatly ordered surroundings and the road ahead seemed far too long.

But then he reached a cross-roads. At each corner stood a large marker stone while on a grassy circle at the centre was a little hut with a straw roof and smoke wafting from its low doorway. Beside the hut was a large and battered wooden sign-post with its fingers pointing in four directions. Draped over the fingers was a variety of shirts and trousers drying in the sun clothes which appeared to belong to a man lying in the grass.

"Good afternoon, stranger," said the knight as his horse came to a halt, lowering its head to browse on a large clump of nettles.

"Don't stop here!" cried the man, jumping to his feet and waving his arms as the knight swung down from his saddle. "Go wherever you was going, but don't stop here." The man paused and added more calmly: "And as for being a stranger well, just who isn't a stranger here?"

The knight glanced again at the thatched hut, the washing on the lop-sided sign-post, the sheep and the little walled fields. He saw nothing to fear.

"And why should I not have stopped here?"

"'Because now you'll have to decide where to go next," the man replied, sinking back into the grass and staring at the sky.

"I see," said the knight, loosening the horse's girth. "And who are you?"

"An outcast, sir," the man replied.

"An outcast from what? Who made you an outcast?"

"See them four stones?" the outcast said, sitting up and pointing around him. "Them's landmarks, with writing on them. And the writing says that all this land belongs to particular people there and there and there and there," he said, jabbing his finger all around him. He sighed and lay down again: "Know something? Not long ago, this was all forest "

"Yes, I do know," said the knight, removing his sword and buckler. "I remember how it was. It was years ago but I remember it all the same."

"Well," said the outcast wearily, "now all this land and all them bloody sheep belong to people. To 'some' people, that is. And when a thing belongs to 'some' people it don't belong to all the other people.

The knight was impressed by this simple logic.

"Same with me," he continued. "I don't belong, so I'm an outcast."

"Can't you go somewhere else?" asked the knight, peering at the sign.

"Ah, it's not that easy. You have to choose. When it was all forest, you went where you wanted. Now they give you a choice. They say that you're fortunate to have a choice. They say you're free because you have a choice. But it's them that chooses what you can choose from. They say: 'Do you want to go left or right' and you think about it and very soon you've forgotten that you was thinking of going straight ahead or that you could have turned back or that you might have gone off in any of a dozen other directions. And if you ignore their choices and you stray off their roads, you're a trespasser on someone's property."

"But surely a sign-post is quite helpful," said the knight reasonably.

"Not at all," said the outcast taking off a shoe and hammering at a column of ants between his feet. "It's a tyranny. Soon as you stop to think about it you know there's a good chance you'll make a bad choice and go where you'd never have gone without them suggesting it and then you come to regret it. So that's why I tell people not to stop here. Keep going, I say."

The knight stared at the ants which had resumed their orderly procession.

"And what makes it worse," the outcast continued, "is if you choose one road you're rejecting another and people notice things like that."

The knight sat down, gazed at the hills and listened to the bleating sheep.

"Excuse me asking you, sir, but which way are you going?"

"I'm going home."

"I suppose that's what we're all doing," the outcast observed thoughtfully. "But how do you know which way to go?"

"Well, by night I follow the stars and by day I stop and ask people. But mostly I follow my instincts and trust my horse. By the way, do you have any water?"

The outcast fetched a bucket from the hut and they watered the horse.

"But the stars don't say 'take this road and then take that road', do they?"

"No," the knight agreed, "they don't. And nor do the people I meet. They simply warn me of the dangers of going this way, the wisdom of going that way, or the pleasures I might find by going another way "

"Exactly! You ask them and they help you. They don't stop you and make you decide," said the outcast over his shoulder as he headed back to his hut.

The knight lay gazing at the clouds for some time until his thoughts were disturbed by an appalling noise. He sat up just in time to see the outcast wielding a big stick and aiming a second vicious blow at the battered sign-post, followed by several hard kicks. The fingers shook.

Satisfied, the outcast sat down.

"The worst of it all is that there's no end to it," he said. "One sign always leads to another. And then there's you, sir, a brave knight. When you stand here in front of that sign-post, do you accept their right to stop you in your tracks, offer you choices you never wanted and then challenge you to make a decision? Tell me, sir, what right do they have to do that?"

"Yes, I know. And of course you're right," said the knight with a grin as he picked up his sword, tightened the horse's girth and mounted the saddle. "My friend, why don't you come with me and be my companion?"

"Oh, thank you, sir," said the outcast, bowing low. "That's a very kind offer and one I'd very much like to accept. But the choice isn't mine. As you see, someone has to stay here to warn all the others who pass this way."

The knight bowed too and then rode slowly back to the forest. But before he was entirely reclaimed by its green freedom, he looked over his shoulder. The tiny figure at the cross-roads was still waving him farewell.