Bertram, as a courteous squire of dames, came forward bowing low, and the party were soon seated at the board—­literally a board, supported upon trestles, only large enough to receive the Prioress, the squire and the recovered girl, but daintily veiled in delicate white napery.

It was screened off from the rest of the refectory, where the few Sisters had already had their morning’s meal after Holy Communion; and from it there was a slight barrier, on the other side of which Bertram Selby ought to have been, but rules sat very lightly on the Prioress Selby.  Bertram was of kin to her, and she had no demur as to admitting him to her private table.  He was, in fact, a squire of the household of the Marquess of Montagu, brother of the Kingmaker and had been despatched with letters to the south.  He had made a halt at his cousin’s priory, had been persuaded to join in flying the new hawks, and then had first been detained by the snow-storm, and then joined in the quest for the lost Lady Anne St. John.

No doubt had then arisen that the Nevils were firm in their attachment to Edward IV., and, as a consequence, in enmity to the House of Clifford, and both these scions of Selby had been excited at a rumour that the widow of the Baron who had slain young Edmund of York had married Sir Lancelot Threlkeld of Threlkeld, and that her eldest son, the heir of the line, might be hidden somewhere on the De Vesci estates.

Bertram had already told the Prioress that his men had spied a lad accompanying the shepherd who escorted the lady, and who, he thought, had a certain twang of south country speech; and no sooner had he carved for the ladies, according to the courtly duty of an esquire, than the inquiry began as to who had found the maiden and where she had been lodged.  Prioress Agnes, who had already broken her fast, sat meantime with the favourite hawk on her wrist and a large dog beside her, feeding them alternately with the bones of the grouse.

’Come, tell us all, sweet Nan!  Where wast thou in that untimely snow-storm?  In a cave, starved with cold, eh?’

‘I was safe in a cabin with a kind old gammer.’

‘Eh!  And how cam’st thou there?  Wandering thither?’

‘Nay, the shepherd heard me call.’

‘The shepherd!  What, the churl that came with thee?’

‘He carried me to the hut.’

Anne was on her guard, though Bertram probed her well.  Was there only one shepherd?  Was there not a boy with her on the hill-side where Bertram met her?  The shepherd lad in sooth!  What became of him?  The shepherd sent him back, he had been too long away from his flock.  What was his name?  What was the shepherd’s name?  Who was his master?  Anne did not know—­she had heard no names save Hob and Hal, she had seen no arms, she had heard nothing southland.  The lad was a mere herd-boy, ordered out to milk ewes and tend the sheep.  She answered briefly, and