It was late in the afternoon when I found myself again at the "Oriflame," and there I found mine host in a monstrous flutter, thinking I, too, had given him the slip without paying my account. I made him happy on that score with the moiety of my gold piece, and thereby bound him to me for ever and a day. For he seemed a man whose wont it was never to get his due. I was solacing my impatience as I waited for vespers, by pacing to and fro in the wood which divided the road to Dover from the convent wall; when I was startled to come suddenly upon a horse, saddled and bridled, tied up in a covert. It had a pillion on its back; and seemed like the beast on which a farmer and his wife might ride together to market. So, indeed, I thought it to be, when, looking about me, I perceived in the saddle-bow a knife, the hilt of which I had seen before. It was, in fact, a knife I had myself given to Peter, one day two years ago, when I had won a new one at Finsbury Fields, and when my fellow 'prentice and I were better friends than we became later on. The sight of this knife suddenly brought the blood to my head with a mighty rush. For it showed that this horse waited here for Peter; and if for Peter, for what lady was the pillion provided? I had wit enough, without a moment's delay, to hide myself among the trees; assured that whatever mischief was in the air, it would come at length to this trysting place. And so it fell out. I heard the chapel bell begin to toll ere long, and pictured in my mind the sisters and their wards crossing devoutly from the convent garden to the little chapel in the wood. No doubt the sleek Peter would be there to eye them as they glided in; and when the service was done, perchance, he would seek to make his wicked swoop on that poor, unsuspecting lamb, and carry her off to his foul paymaster. In an hour-- What was that? I suddenly heard close to me staggering footsteps and a stifled groan, accompanied by the hard panting of a man who laboured with a heavy load. That they were coming my way was evident by the crackling of the underwood and the impatience of the horse. What a year did those two minutes seem as I waited there, sword in hand! Then there broke into the covert a man, dragging on his arm the fainting form of her whom, though I had not seen her for a long year, I knew in a moment to be Rose O'Neill, my master Ludar's maiden. But what amazed me most was the man who carried her. I had looked for Peter Stoupe to a certainty; but instead of him I saw the taller of the two priests whom I had passed only that morning on the way to the convent. The delusion lasted only a moment. For as he turned his head, I saw beneath the cowl the well-known, cadaverous, hungry visage of my masquerading 'prentice, and knew that I was right after all.