Joan and her father, after a considerable period spent in wanderings in foreign lands (during which Sir Hugh had quite overcome the melancholy and sense of panic into which he had been thrown by the scourge of the Black Death and his wife’s sudden demise as one of its victims), had at length returned to Woodcrych.  The remembrance of the plague was fast dying out from men’s minds.  The land was again under cultivation; and although labour was still scarce and dear, and continued to be so for many, many years, whilst the attempts at legislation on this point only produced riot and confusion (culminating in the next reign in the notable rebellion of Wat Tyler, and leading eventually to the emancipation of the English peasantry), things appeared to be returning to their normal condition, and men began to resume their wonted apathy of mind, and to cease to think of the scourge as the direct visitation of God.

Sir Hugh had been one of those most alarmed by the ravages of the plague.  He was full of the blind superstition of a thoroughly irreligious man, and he knew well that he had been dabbling in forbidden arts, and had been doing things that were supposed in those days to make a man peculiarly the prey of the devil after death.  Thus when the Black Death had visited the country, and he had heard on all sides that it was the visitation of God for the sins of the nations, he had been seized with a panic which had been some years in cooling, and he had made pilgrimages and had paid a visit to his Holiness the Pope in order to feel that he had made amends for any wrongdoing in his previous life.

He had during this fit of what was rather panic than repentance avoided Woodcrych sedulously, as the place where these particular sins which frightened him now had been committed.  He had thus avoided any encounter with Peter Sanghurst, and Joan had hoped that the shadow of that evil man was not destined to cross her path again.  But, unluckily for her hopes, a reaction had set in in her father’s feelings.  His blind, unreasoning terror had now given place to an equally wild and reckless confidence and assurance.  The Black Death had come and gone, and had passed him by (he now said) doing him no harm.  He had obtained the blessing of the Pope, and felt in his heart that he could set the Almighty at defiance.  His revenues, much impoverished through the effects of the plague, made the question of expenditure the most pressing one of the hour; and the knight had come to Woodcrych with the distinct intention of prosecuting those studies in alchemy and magic which a year or two back he had altogether forsworn.

Old Sanghurst was dead, he knew —­ the devil had claimed one of his own.  But the son was living still, and was to be heard of, doubtless, at Basildene.  Peter Sanghurst was posing in the world as a wealthy man, surrounded by a halo of mystery which gave him distinction and commanded respect.  Sir Hugh felt that he might be a very valuable ally, and began to regret now that his fears had made him so long an exile from his country and a wanderer from home.