Meantime Raymond went forth, as he was wont to do, into the beech wood that lay behind the home of the monks.  It was a very beautiful place at all times; never more so than when the first tender green of coming summer was clothing the giant trees, and the primroses and wood sorrel were carpeting the ground, which was yet brown with the fallen leaves of the past autumn.  The slanting sunbeams were quivering through the gnarled tree trunks, and the birds were singing rapturously overhead, as Raymond bent his steps along the trodden path which led to the nearest village; but he suddenly stopped short with a start of surprise on encountering the intent gaze of a pair of fierce black eyes, and finding himself face to face with a stranger he had never seen in his life before.

Never seen?  No; and yet he knew the man perfectly, and felt that he changed colour as he stood gazing upon the handsome malevolent face that was singularly repulsive despite its regular features and bold beauty.  In a moment he recollected where he had seen those very lineaments portrayed with vivid accuracy, even to the sinister smile and the gleam in the coal-black eyes.

Roger possessed a gift of face drawing that would in these days make the fortune of any portrait painter.  He had many times drawn with a piece of rough charcoal pictures of the monks as he saw them in the refectory, the refined and hollow face of John, and the keen and powerful countenance of Father Paul.  So had he also portrayed for Raymond the features of the two Sanghursts, father and son.  The youth knew perfectly the faces of both; and as he stopped short, gazing at this stranger with wide-open eyes, he knew in a moment that Roger’s malevolent foe was nigh at hand, and that the sensitive and morbidly acute faculties of the boy had warned him of the fact, when he could by no possibility have known it by any other means.

Sanghurst stood looking intently at this bright-faced boy, a smile on his lips, a frown in his eyes.

“Methinks thou comest from the Monastery hard by?” he questioned smoothly.  “Canst tell me if there be shelter there for a weary traveller this night?”

“For a poor and weary traveller perchance there might be,” answered the boy, with a gleam in his eye not lost upon his interlocutor; “but it is no house of entertainment for the rich and prosperous.  Those are sent onwards to the Benedictine Brothers, some two miles south from this.  Father Paul opens not his gates save to the sick, the sorrowful, the needy.  Shall I put you in the way of the other house, Sir?  Methinks it would suit you better than any place which calls Father Paul its head.”

The gaze bent upon the boy was searching and distinctly hostile.  As the dialogue proceeded, the look of malevolence gradually deepened upon the face of the stranger, till it might have made a timid heart quail.

“How then came John de Brocas to tarry there so long?  For aught I know he may be there yet.  By what right is he a guest beneath this so hospitable roof?”