As for Raymond, an unwonted restlessness came over him at this time.  He was growing stronger and better.  Moderate exercise was recommended as beneficial, and almost every day during the bright hours of the forenoon his steps were turned towards the town of Guildford, lying hard by his uncle’s Rectory house.  Scarce a day passed but what he was rewarded by a chance encounter with Mistress Joan —­ either a glimpse of her at a window, or a smile from her bright eyes as she passed him upon her snow-white palfrey; or sometimes he would have the good hap to meet her upon foot, attended by her nurse, or some couple of stout retainers, if her walk had been in any wise extended; and then she would pause and bring him to her side by a look, and inquire after his own health and that of John, who seldom stirred out in the bitter cold of winter.  Then he would ask and obtain her permission to accompany her as far as the gate of her own home —­ the place where she was staying; and though he never advanced beyond the gate —­ for she knew not what her relatives might say to these encounters with a gallant without money and without lands —­ they were red-letter days in the calendar of two young lives, and were strong factors moulding their future lives, little as either knew it at the time.

Had either the radiant maiden or the knightly youth had eyes for any but the other, they might have observed that these encounters, now of almost daily occurrence, were not unheeded by at least one evil-faced watcher.  The servants who attended Mistress Joan were all devoted to her, and kept their own counsel, whatever they might think, and Raymond’s fame as one of the heroes of Crecy had already gone far and wide, and won him great regard in and about the walls of his uncle’s home; but there was another watcher of Mistress Joan’s movements who took a vastly different view of the little idyll playing itself out between the youth and the maiden, and this watcher was none other than the evil and vengeful Peter Sanghurst the younger.

Once as Raymond turned away, after watching Joan’s graceful, stately figure vanish up the avenue which led to her uncle’s house, he suddenly encountered the intensely malevolent glance of a pair of coal-black eyes, and found himself most unexpectedly face to face with the same man who had once confronted him in the forest and had demanded the restitution of the boy Roger.

“You again!” hissed out between his teeth the dark-browed man.  “You again daring to stand in my path to thwart me!  Have a care how you provoke me too far.  My day is coming!  Think you that I threaten in vain?  Go on then in your blind folly and hardihood!  But remember that I can read the future.  I can see the day when you, a miserable crushed worm, will be wholly and solely in my power; when you will be mine mine to do with what I will, none hindering or gainsaying me.  Take heed then how you provoke me to vengeance; for the vengeance of the Sanghurst can be what thou