“Peace be with thee, my son.”

Julian stopped short, and slightly bent the knee.  He looked up into Brother Fabian’s face with a look which Edred well knew, and which implied no love for his interlocutor.  A stranger, however, would be probably pleased at the frank directness of the gaze, not noting the underlying hardihood and defiance.

“Alone, my son?” questioned the brother.  “Methought I saw thee not long since with thy father and brother and the servants.  How comes it thou art now alone?”

“I saw thee not,” answered Julian, without attempting to reply to the question.

“Belike no.  I was telling my beads out here in the forest.  Thou didst pass me by all unknowing; but I was nigh thy path the while nevertheless.  Whither—­”

“That is something strange,” remarked the boy, affecting not to hear the commencement of another question; “for I could be sworn that not a squirrel or field mouse crosses my path but that I mark him down.  But I may not linger thus; the hour of our studies is already here.  I wish you good e’en; I must away home.”

The boy would have been gone with a bound the next instant had not the monk laid a detaining hand upon his arm.  Edred saw by the reluctance of his brother’s mien that he resented being thus stayed.

“One moment, good my son,” said Brother Fabian.  “Tell me whither thy father and brother have gone.  It is something too late in the day for a hunting party; yet I knew not that the good knight purposed any journey.”

Edred saw the sudden flash that came into Julian’s eyes.  He was in an agony lest the boy should betray his father’s destination, which to the astute mind of the monk might betray much more than his brother himself knew; but as he heard Julian’s words he drew his breath more freely.

“Marry, hast thou not heard that my Lord of Beaumaris and Rochefort goes a-hunting tomorrow with great muster?  My father has gone to join the goodly company assembling there.  Wilt thou not go thither too, Master Monk, and join the revelry that will make the hall ring tonight?  I trow there is welcome for all who come.  I would my father had taken me.”

“Go to, saucy boy, go to!” replied the brother, half piqued, half amused by the lad’s boldness in thus implying that his place was at a riotous revel such as generally took place when some great baron invited his friends for a day’s sport in the forest.

It was like enough that this hunting party had been arranged for the morrow, and this road certainly led to Beaumaris and Rochefort.  The reply seemed to satisfy the monk, and he relaxed his grasp of the boy’s arm.

“I must not keep thee from thy studies longer,” he said.  “Say, what does Brother Emmanuel teach you?”

“The Latin tongue and the use of the pen.  Edred is a fine scribe already.  And he hath taught us our letters in Greek likewise; for men are saying, he tells us, that it is shame that that language has been neglected so long, since the Holy Scriptures were written in it first.”