“It appeared to me best to speak with him openly,” said the priest quietly, as they had waited ten minutes later on the wharf outside the Tower, while the men ran to make ready their boat.  “I do not know why, but I suppose I am one of those who better like their danger in front than behind.  I knew him at once; I have had him pointed out to me two or three times before.  So I looked him in the eyes, and asked him whether some ladies from the country might be permitted to see the White Tower, and to whom we had best apply.  He told me that was not his affair, and looked me up and down as he said it.  And then he went his way to ... the White Tower, where I doubt not he had business.”

“He said no more?” asked Anthony.

“No, he said no more.  But I shall know him again better next time, and he me.”

* * * * *

It seemed of evil omen to the girl that she should have had such an encounter on the day that Robin came back.  Like all persons who dwell much in the country, a world that was neither that of the flesh nor yet of the spirit was that in which she largely moved—­a world of strange laws, and auspices, and this answering to this and that to that.  It is a state inconceivable to those who live in the noise and movement of town—­who find town-life, that is, the life in which they are most at ease.  For where men have made the earth that is trodden underfoot, and have largely veiled the heavens themselves, it is but natural that they should think that they have made everything, and that it is they who rule it.

As they drew nearer Westminster then, it was with Marjorie as it had been when they came to the Tower.  The priest was busy pointing out this or that building—­the Palace towers, the Hall, the Abbey behind, and St. Margaret’s Church, as well as the smaller buildings of the Court, and the little town that lay round about.  But she listened as she listened to the noise that came from the streets clear across the water, attending to it, yet scarcely distinguishing one thing from another, and forgetting each as soon as she heard it.  She was thinking all the while of Robin, and of the man whose face she had seen, of his beard and his long throat.  Well, at least, Robin was not yet a priest....

* * * * *

The boat was already nearing the King’s Stairs at Westminster, when a new event happened that for a while distracted her.

The first they saw of it was the sight of a number of men and women running in a disorderly mob, calling out as they ran, along the river-bank in the direction from Charing Old Cross towards Palace Yard.  They appeared excited, but not by fear; and it was plain that something was taking place of which they wished to have a sight.  As the priest stood up in the boat in order to have a clearer sight of what lay above the bank, three or four trumpet-calls of a peculiar melody, rang out clear and distinct, echoed back by the walls round about, plainly audible above the rising noise of a crowd that, it seemed, must be gathering out of sight.  The priest sat down again and his face was merry.