rebellion, sought to know their business. For a while things were
dangerous, but Bolle, who could talk their own dialect, showed that
they were scarcely to be feared who travelled with two women and a babe,
adding that he was a lay-brother of Blossholme Abbey disguised as a
serving-man for dread of the King's party. Jacob Smith also called for
ale and drank with them to the success of the Pilgrimage of Grace, as
their revolt was named.

In this way they disarmed suspicion with one tale and another.
Moreover, they heard that as yet the country round Blossholme remained
undisturbed, although it was said that the Abbot had fortified the Abbey
and stored it with provisions. He himself was with the leaders of the
revolt in the neighbourhood of Lincoln, but he had done this that he
might have a strong place to fall back on.

So in the end the men went away full of strong beer, and that danger
passed by.

Next morning they started forward early, hoping to reach Blossholme by
sunset though the days were shortening much. This, however, was not
to be, for as it chanced they were badly bogged in a quagmire that lay
about two miles off their inn, and when at length they scrambled out had
to ride many miles round to escape the swamp. So it happened that it
was already well on in the afternoon when they came to that stretch of
forest in which the Abbot had murdered Sir John Foterell. Following the
woodland road, towards sunset they passed the mere where he had fallen.
Weary as she was, Cicely looked at the spot and found it familiar.

"I know this place," she said. "Where have I seen it? Oh, in the ill
dream I had on that day I lost my father."

"That is not wonderful," answered Emlyn, who rode beside her carrying
the child, "seeing that Thomas says it was just here they butchered him.
Look, yonder lie the bones of Meg, his mare; I know them by her black
mane."

"Aye, Lady," broke in Bolle, "and there he lies also where he fell; they
buried him with never a Christian prayer," and he pointed to a little
careless mound between two willows.

"Jesus, have mercy on his soul!" said Cicely, crossing herself. "Now, if
I live, I swear that I will move his bones to the chancel of Blossholme
church and build a fair monument to his memory."

This, as all visitors to the place know, she did, for that monument
remains to this day, representing the old knight lying in the snow, with
the arrow in his throat, between the two murderers whom h