ine own.

But ill fortune attended me. For early as I was, matins had been sung
an hour ago; nor was there another service till noon, and that only for
the sisters. I must wait till evensong, to satisfy myself, and, with
much misgiving at the delay, dragged myself back to the "Oriflame."

Just as I turned off from the Dover road, there passed me in haste two
men habited as priests, travel-stained, as coming off a long journey,
yet apparently familiar enough with the path which led to the friendly
shelter of the convent. I saw neither of their faces, for both were
bent over the books they read; but I marked that one of them was tall
and lean, while the other, who walked with more of a swagger, was
shorter and better fed. I doubt if either of them saw me. But somehow
I liked not the sight of them, or the path they took. It seemed to me
to bode ill to the maiden; and I longed to have my business with his
Grace ended that I might return and be near the place where she was.

For three mortal hours, that forenoon, was I kept kicking my heels in
his Grace's ante-chamber; and in the end was told curtly his Grace had
no leisure at present for such business, and that I must come again on
the morrow. I own I spake disrespectfully of his Grace when they gave
me this message, and was fain, on that account, to retreat from the
precincts more hastily than most suitors are wont to do. Here was
another day wasted, and who was to say that the same put-off did not
await me to-morrow?

It was late in the afternoon when I found myself again at the
"Oriflame," and there I found mine host in a monstrous flutter, thinking
I, too, had given him the slip without paying my account. I made him
happy on that score with the moiety of my gold piece, and thereby bound
him to me for ever and a day. For he seemed a man whose wont it was
never to get his due.

I was solacing my impatience as I waited for vespers, by pacing to and
fro in the wood which divided the road to Dover from the convent wall;
when I was startled to come suddenly upon a horse, saddled and bridled,
tied up in a covert. It had a pillion on its back; and seemed like the
beast on which a farmer and his wife might ride together to market. So,
indeed, I thought it to be, when, looking about me, I perceived in the
saddle-bow a knife, the hilt of which I had seen before. It was, in
fact, a knife I had myself given to Peter, one day two years ago, when I
had won a new one