om, the door of which was still safely locked. They looked
each other in the face with a proud, glad smile.

"It is done!" cried Edred, drawing a long breath.

"Nay, not altogether," answered Julian, with eyes that flashed with
excitement; and drawing a step nearer his brother, he said in
changed tones, "Now must that rascally priest have fled, and it
behoves us to search the precincts of the place with all diligence.
We must not leave a nook or a cranny unvisited, and must make a
mighty coil. Thou takest me, brother, dost thou not?"

Edred made a quick, eager sign of assent.

"Ay, Julian, I do; and when we have done all that, let us back to
the priory again. We must whisper in our father's ear that Brother
Emmanuel is safe. Then will he act with a freer hand. And it were
better, perchance, that we were all there to ride back with him
when he takes his leave."

Julian assented at once to this proposition; and forth went the
boys, at first calling aloud the name of their tutor, and then
halting, always within earshot of one of the spies, to debate where
he could have concealed himself, darting hither and thither, as if
suddenly remembering some new place, and ever returning
disappointed and vexed.

"He is a veritable fox!" cried Julian, flinging his cap on the
ground in a well-assumed tempest of chagrin. "He must have left
Chad altogether, for not a trace of him is here; and I looked to
have the pleasure of bringing him ourselves before the reverend
prior, to atone for having helped that other pestilent fellow to
avoid for a while the hand of the law. A plague upon him and his
cunning ways! Unless he have found the secret chamber our father
knows of, and which he once took us to see, there be no other place
in all Chad where he can be lurking, unless he has been moving from
spot to spot at our approach. A pest upon the crafty rogue!"

"We shall do no good loitering here, since he be really gone,"
remarked Edred, in a tone of vexation very like his brother's;
"perchance he may have fallen into the hands of the prior through
the watch of which he spoke. I trust it may be so. But for us, I
trow we had better go back to see the end of the day's spectacle.
We can do no more at Chad. If he is hiding he will not dare come
forth now, with all the folks returning so soon; and if he has got
clean away, nothing we can do will bring him back."

Julian grumbled in the finest phrases he could think of as the two
pursued the