Nor, though they searched for days, could they find him at Shefton or elsewhere, for Jeffrey, who knew that all roads were blocked, and who dared not venture home, doubling like a hare across country, had won down to the water, where a ship lay foreign bound, and by dawn was on the sea.

CHAPTER III

A WEDDING

About noon of the day after that upon which Sir John had come to his death, Cicely Foterell sat at her meal in Shefton Hall.  Not much of the rough midwinter fare passed her lips, for she was ill at ease.  The man she loved had been dismissed from her because his fortunes were on the wane, and her father had gone upon a journey which she felt, rather than knew, to be very dangerous.  The great old hall was lonesome, also, for a young girl who had no comrades near.  Sitting there in the big room, she bethought her how different it had been in her childhood, before some foul sickness, of which she knew not the name or nature, had swept away her mother, her two brothers, and her sister all in a single week, leaving her untouched.  Then there were merry voices about the house where now was silence, and she alone, with naught bout a spaniel dog for company.  Also most of the men were away with the wains laden with the year’s clip of wool, which her father had held until the price had heightened, nor in this snow would they be back for another week, or perhaps longer.

Oh! her heart was heavy as the winter clouds without, and young and fair as she might be, almost she wished that she had gone when her brothers went, and found her peace.

To cheer her spirits she drank from a cup of spiced ale, that the manservant had placed beside her covered with a napkin, and was glad of its warmth and comfort.  Just then the door opened, and her foster-mother, Mrs. Stower, entered.  She was still a handsome woman in her prime, for her husband had been carried off by a fever when she was but nineteen, and her baby with him, whereon she had been brought to the Hall to nurse Cicely, whose mother was very ill after her birth.  Moreover, she was tall and dark, with black and flashing eyes, for her father had been a Spaniard of gentle birth, and, it was said, gypsy blood ran in her mother’s veins.

There were but two people in the world for whom Emlyn Stower cared—­Cicely, her foster-child, and a certain playmate of hers, one Thomas Bolle, now a lay-brother at the Abbey who had charge of the cattle.  The tale was that in their early youth he had courted her, not against her will, and that when, after her parents’ tragic deaths, as a ward of the former Abbot of Blossholme, she was married to her husband, not with her will, this Thomas put on the robe of a monk of the lowest degree, being but a yeoman of good stock though of little learning.

Something in the woman’s manner attracted Cicely’s attention, and gave a hint of tragedy.  She paused at the door, fumbling with its latch, which was not her way, then turned and stood upright against it, like a picture in its frame.