This danger did suggest itself for a moment to Linda, and she resolved to watch earnestly the turn of affairs. The conversation at that moment was interrupted by the entrance of Edmund and Leofric into the room where the girls were sitting. Alys bent over her frame to hide her momentary confusion, but it passed unobserved in the excitement of the moment. "The King is on his way thither!" cried Edmund; "he is to enter the city to-morrow. The students are pouring out as though the plague were threatening. In a few hours' time, they say, there will be scarce three hundred left, and perhaps not so many. The townsfolks are all agape and disturbed; for many there be of the clerks who vow they will never return, but will set up their abode in Cambridge or Northampton, and establish a rival University there. The masters have followed their scholars, as is but wise; and the citizens are crying out that the King has ruined the town. It is but a sorry welcome he will have on the morrow when he makes his entry here." "Methinks his Majesty will repent him of his mistake," said Alys. "Why did he drive forth the clerks? My father could surely have kept order in the city." "Marry, he was afraid," answered Edmund; "and indeed he had some cause, for in his mandate to my father he speaks of his own lords who will attend him as being 'so untamed and fierce' that he dare not trust them so near to an army of turbulent clerks, famous for their unruly conduct." Alys's lips curved to a smile of some contempt. "Methinks our monarch is but a poor poltroon," she said. "Small wonder if the realm sink beneath his sway." "Nevertheless he is about to do a bolder thing than any King has attempted since the days of the Saxons," answered Edmund, laughing; "for he declares that his first action will be, on entering Oxford, to pay a visit to the shrine of St. Frideswyde!" "And wherefore should he not?" asked both girls in a breath; whereupon Leofric was called upon to tell the legend of St. Frideswyde--how she had taken the vow of chastity, but was pestered without ceasing by the King of Mercia, who desired her hand in marriage. She fled from him to Oxford, where he pursued her, laying siege to the town; but in answer to her prayers he was struck with blindness, and returned to his own country, leaving her in peace to found her nunnery and devote herself to the religious life. But since that date no King had ever ventured to intrude himself even to lay offerings upon her shrine, and the resolution of Henry the Third to brave the anger of the virgin saint was regarded as a proof of piety and courage, since he openly declared that he could not believe any ill would be suffered to follow an act of homage to one whom he revered and desired to honour.