“He is a veritable fox!” cried Julian, flinging his cap on the ground in a well-assumed tempest of chagrin.  “He must have left Chad altogether, for not a trace of him is here; and I looked to have the pleasure of bringing him ourselves before the reverend prior, to atone for having helped that other pestilent fellow to avoid for a while the hand of the law.  A plague upon him and his cunning ways!  Unless he have found the secret chamber our father knows of, and which he once took us to see, there be no other place in all Chad where he can be lurking, unless he has been moving from spot to spot at our approach.  A pest upon the crafty rogue!”

“We shall do no good loitering here, since he be really gone,” remarked Edred, in a tone of vexation very like his brother’s; “perchance he may have fallen into the hands of the prior through the watch of which he spoke.  I trust it may be so.  But for us, I trow we had better go back to see the end of the day’s spectacle.  We can do no more at Chad.  If he is hiding he will not dare come forth now, with all the folks returning so soon; and if he has got clean away, nothing we can do will bring him back.”

Julian grumbled in the finest phrases he could think of as the two pursued their way back towards the priory, increasing their speed as they left Chad behind, and very quickly gaining the meadow, where the servants were already beginning to collect the horses and get them ready for their masters.

The day’s proceedings were over.  Refreshments were being served in the refectory to all of the better sort.  Sir Oliver’s two younger sons had never been missed; but Edred contrived to slip into the hall, and in passing beside his father’s chair to whisper in his ear the four simple words: 

“Brother Emmanuel is safe!”

None heard the whisper, not even Bertram, who was sitting next his father, though he read it in his brother’s eye the next moment.  Edred had affected to catch the clasp of his belt against his father’s chair as he passed by, and in pausing to free it had bent his head and spoken the brief message.

No change passed over Sir Oliver’s face.  Not a creature present observed the trifling by-play.  Wine had circulated freely, and much laughing and talking were going on.  The prior had unbent from his judicial severity, and even the Lord of Mortimer was smiling and bland, although there was something in his aspect that suggested the fierce feline play of a man-eating creature biding its time and toying with its victim.

Just before the close of the feast Sir Oliver rose to his feet.