In the light of Mother Sweetbread’s rush candle Peter stared at the sparrow-like child, and the sparrow-like child stared at Peter.

There was no manner of doubt as to his peril. If the Fettiplace men laid hands on him, he would have the evidence of the Bishop’s servants against him — honest evidence, for it would rest upon the sight of his own cloak on the back of the man who had freed the gospeller. To rebut it he must proclaim his connection with Avelard and reveal the details of his journey, and that meant that he, who for the moment must court obscurity, would stand out glaringly to the whole shire — nay, even to Oxford and the Bishop of Lincoln. The thing was not to be thought of.

“I am trysted with Solomon in Oxford,” he told the woman, “but not till the dark hours, so I must get me to cover. I am for Stowood.... Feed the child, mother, for he has earned it well.” Then to the boy, “What is your name?”

“They call me Dickon,” was the answer. “Dickon of the Holt!”

“Then, Dickon, get you back the road you came. Put yourself in the way of the Swinbrook men and let them drag from you news of me. You saw me on the Witney road with the prisoner, riding like one possessed.... This horse of mine, mother, you will send into the forest till I can recover him. Hide him where no Fettiplace can penetrate, for he is a damning link with Avelard. Then give me some provender for the road, for I will be hungry before tomorrow’s e’en.”

“This is the vigil of Hallowmas,” said the old woman anxiously. “’Tis an ill night to take to the greenwood.”

“Better Hallowe’en witches than the rough hands of Squire Fettiplace. Haste you, mother. I must be beyond Cherwell ere daybreak.”

Ten minutes later Peter — cloakless, for he must travel light — had slipped from the hut, where a hungry lad was supping bear-meal porridge, and an old woman was saying spells by the fire for his protection. The snow had ceased to fall, but it lay an inch and more deep on the ground. The wind had dropped, a few stars showed, and on the horizon there was the prelude of moonrise. It was bitter cold, so he ran — first across the slushy pastures, then through the scrub of the forest bounds, and then by a path he knew, which in the shadow of the trees was almost bare of snow, and which took him down the southern ridge of the Evenlode vale.

Now that he had leisure to think, his anger surged up against Simon Rede. The man was a foe to God, for he had freed a heretic — Peter made the reflection mechanically and without conviction, for it seemed to set his grievance on higher grounds than his own pride. Simon was certainly an enemy to himself, for he had deforced the Bishop’s men in such a way as to lay the blame on his innocent head. Doubtless, too, he had earlier in the day made the two Avelard men drunk. For what purpose? To free the gospeller? But why incriminate Peter?

He was of the opposite party, and must suspect something — Lord Avelard had feared this — Sir Ralph Bonamy had feared it — that was why he himself had had to take the road again. The man was as cunning as he was bold. Peter thought bitterly of how he had thawed to this enemy, and a few hours ago had looked on him almost as a comrade. He remembered ruefully his admiration of the man’s carriage and conversation. And he had been nobly duped. The stolen cloak, the tale of a journey post-haste to Boarstall, the friendly parting — every incident rankled in his memory.... Well, it was for him to defeat Master Simon’s conspiracies. He had something against him — the knowledge, the certain knowledge, that he was in league with those who defied the King’s grace in matters of religion.... And then he laughed sardonically, for he himself was about to defy the King’s grace in things of greater moment.

He strove to keep his mind on the notion that Simon’s hostility to him was because of state policy. But it would not stay there. The unpleasing reflection would edge its way in that the cause was Sabine Beauforest. The man had not come to Avelard to please Crummle’s commissary, but to be near the girl. Of that he was as certain as that he was now stumbling through the scrub oaks above Evenlode with owls hooting like lost souls around him. Presently the thought became a conviction, and the conviction an oppression. Simon was a rival, a deadly rival, and he had won the first bout by turning the heir of Avelard into a mockery. He saw that lean face puckered with mirth, and those cool, arrogant, contemptuous eyes, and he had a miserable consciousness of weakness in the face of such an antagonist. Decked with the pomp of Avelard he could condescend on one who was no more than a squire of modest estate, but now Simon was mounted and fronting the world, while he was afoot and a fugitive.

In his depression the picture of Sabine seemed to limn itself on the dark night — Sabine, not as he had last seen her, distracted and sullen, but Sabine on that night when she had opened her arms to him, her pale loveliness suddenly become a fire. Once he had thought of a fair woman as something dim and infinitely distant, like a sickle moon in an April twilight. Now he had seen the fairest of all, her eyes dewy with kindness, her lips tremulous with surrender.... The picture entranced and maddened him, but it also drove Simon Rede from his head. He was Bohun, and his business was to win in the lists which had been set for him. To victory there all other things would be added, chief of which was a laughing girl.

Before dawn the snow returned, big powdery flakes with no wind behind them. In a crook of Bladon heath, just outside the deer~park of Woodstock, he stumbled upon a small encampment of horse~priggers, round a hissing fire. Half a dozen weedy garrons, with their heads muffled in sacking, were tethered near by. John Naps’s watchword saved him a slit throat, and secured him a bed of moderately dry bracken and enough of the fire to warm his toes. There he slept till an hour after daybreak, when he was roused by the encampment shifting ground. He breakfasted on some of the food he had brought from Mother Sweetbread, distrusting the stew of the priggers. The ruffians were civil enough and a little abashed in his presence, for Flatsole ruled the clan with an iron hand. They showed some relief when he prepared to leave them, and they gave him a useful bit of news. Catti the Welshman was in the alehouse at Gosford, lying hid because of a broken rib. Peter must find a place to spend the daylight hours, and in such weather he preferred the shelter of a roof to a cold hollow of Stowood. Where Catti lay he might reckon on a safe sanctuary.

The snow grew heavier as he crossed the open moorlands towards the sharp spire of Kidlington church. He skirted the village and came to the tiny hamlet of Gosford, hard upon a ford of Cherwell. He remembered the alehouse, a pleasant place where, in a garden beside a colony of bees, he had had many a summer draught. Now the bush at its door was turned upside down — the innkeeper’s sign that there was sickness in the hostelry and that no guests could be entertained. There was an utter silence in the hamlet, not a soul showed or a dog stirred, nothing but the even descent of the snow. But behind doors and windows he seemed to catch a glimpse of furtive faces.

Peter made for the back-quarters of the tavern. There he found a sluttish girl plucking a cockerel, and tossing the white feathers to mix with the falling snow. “Will you carry a message, Mother Goose,” said Peter, “to him who lodges here?”

“There be no one lodging here, master,” she said. “Feyther has the autumn sickness, and mother is new brought to bed.”

“Nevertheless, you will take my message and give it to whom you will,” and he spoke the first part of John Naps’s watchword.

She looked up at Peter, and, seeing him young and well-favoured, relaxed her stubbornness. She flung the half-plucked fowl to him with a laugh. “I dare not idle, master, with all the work of the house on my hands. Do ‘ee finish my job and I will carry your word indoors.”

In an instant she was back, giggling.

“Feyther he says, ‘Far as to Peter’s gate.’ What play be it, master? Wychwood’s no more’n six miles.”

“Say, ‘Alack, I shall not be there in time.’”

She nodded. “Ay, that was what I was bidden wait for. Come ‘ee indoors, but first shake the clots from your feet, lest you muck up my floor.”

Catti was not in the house, but in a chamber, the remnant of an old priory, which was connected with the building by a vaulted passage. There he lay on a couch of straw and rags in a darkness illumined only by a brazier which burned beside him and such light as came from above through the slats of the roof. But even in the dimness Peter saw the beetle brows and the fierce black eyes and the hilt of a long knife.

The man was genial and open, for Naps’s pass was clearly a master word. When he heard that Peter — whose name he did not ask — was on his way to meet Darking and in some peril from the law, he became reassuring. Peter was safe for the daylight hours, and what easier than to slip into Oxford by the east gate in weather which would keep the inquisitive at home? Thereafter Solomon would see to him, Solomon who could, if he wanted, pass a red-handed felon through the guards of a palace.

He had got his own hurt on the Worcester road. It was near healed, and he proposed to move towards London, where trade would be brisk, since the King’s law was gone Lincoln way. Peter, with Lord Avelard’s talk in his head, was amazed to find how well informed this bandit was on every matter they had spoken of with hushed voices. He knew what was stirring on the western marches, and named the very numbers which Neville and Latimer had under arms.

Peter asked about Simon Rede, and Catti scratched his head.

“He is a ready man with his blade,” he said, “as some of us know to our cost. But he is merry, too, and Boarstall has a good name among us wandering folk. They say he is hot for some new thing called Gospel, which the King mislikes. There are many that hate him, but more that fear him, and he goes his own road unquestioned.... Nay, he is not one of us. They say that Gospel is harder on an honest man than the King’s justices. Job Cherryman that took up with it fell to groaning and weeping and died of a wasting in a twelvemonth. ’Tis some madness of the gentles, and not for the poor.”

Peter ate the rest of his food in Catti’s company, and noted how messages came all day to the recluse — a head thrust past the door, a question asked and answered, all in the jargon which he had heard at Little Greece. When the time came for him to leave, Catti appointed a ragged urchin to show him the road down the right bank of Cherwell.

“You are well served,” said Peter.

Catti laughed. “Needs must in a trade like mine. This morning, master, you came from Brother Friday’s priggers on Bladon heath. I had news of you before you passed Kidlington granges, and, had you not come from honest company, you had never had speech with Cis here, and gotten entrance to this cell of mine.”

An hour after dark Peter entered Oxford by the side-gate adjoining Magdalen College. The snow had passed, and the air had sharpened to a still frost, but a light fog held the upper heavens, and there was no moon or star. There had been a glow by the east gate, which lit up everything, for Magdalen College, which was without the city wall, had fired a great bonfire to drive away the plague. The High Street was dark in patches, but opposite University College there was a glare also, for in its quadrangle was another bonfire. Though the hour was yet early, the place seemed empty and quiet. Farther on, where Peter had to grope his way to avoid the swollen gutter, there came the music of an organ and young voices across the way. Peter remembered that it was the Eve of All Souls, and that, according to custom, masses were being sung in Chichele’s college for the repose of the dead fallen in France. There was an echo of singing, too, from Brasenose, and Haberdashers’ Hall had lights in all its upper windows. But beyond that it was very dark. The Ram inn had shut its outer door, so that only a narrow thread of light escaped to the cobbles. The flesher near by had shuttered his shop, but the carcase of a buck from Shotover was hanging outside from a hook of the balcony, and Peter’s forehead took the beast’s rump with such force that he sat down heavily in the slush.

At the place called Quarvex, where the church of St Martin hung above the meeting of four streets, stood a stone seat called the Pennyless Bench, built for the comfort of the market-folk. The little square was deserted, and Peter stepped out with more confidence, for he was now on the confines of the west part of the city, which was his own quarter. But from the shadows of the Pennyless Bench a voice spoke:

“’Tis a raw night to go cloakless, friend,” it said.

Peter started and slipped in a puddle of snow. He understood now that the faint glow from the east window of the church must have illumined his figure to one sitting in the shadows. Moreover, he knew the voice. He took a step forward, and saw in the corner of the bench what seemed to be the figure of a tall man.

Even as he stared the figure twitched a cloak from its shoulders and tossed it towards him.

“Take it, friend,” said the voice. “You have the better right to it.” And Peter caught in his hands his own murry-coloured cloak of woollen.

The voice spoke again.

“You would fly at my throat, but I pray you consider. This is no place to brawl for one or t’other of us. Also you are unarmed, and I bear a sword. Doubtless I used you scurvily last night, but I had weighty reasons, which some day I may recount to you. Thank God for a restored garment, and go in peace.”

Peter’s anger flared up at the cool air of authority.

“I have no sword, but, if you ............