While the King's answer hung yet in doubt, an old monk slipped past the Abbot, and, thrusting his shaven gray poll in obeisance close before Edward, mumbled a request which none behind him might hear. It was Peter, the Brother Sacristan--and the King, so far from buffeting the audacious shaveling with his gauntlet, thought for a moment, then smiled, and waved Peter aside. "On my kingly honor, I promise," he said firmly, with a glance ranging from Peter to the Abbot, and the half-smile playing on his handsome, ruddy face. "Before God, I promise! And for this sacrilegious bloodshed here, will I do penance!" The Abbot's withered old lips formed a mute thanksgiving. "My liege," he faltered, "some forewarning of your triumph of a surety brought me from my bed to the altar this day. Praise God thy enemies are put under thy feet! Pray God for humility and a gentle spirit, these to stay thee from trampling them! Wilt follow, and hear the Mass?" Thus strangely, the broken procession was reformed, and Hugh, aweary now under the weight of the cross, sick with the smell of blood and the sight of hewn corpses at his feet, stumbled back again up the aisle, past the rood screen, into the choir, the singers chanting the solemn _Te Deum Laudamus_ behind him, and King, princes, nobles and knights and monks and soldiers following the Abbot to the High Altar. Here, out of pity at his white face, another took his office on him, and Hugh, escaping from the incense-laden air of the choir, staggered into the ambulatory, faint and distressed. He had too little wit left to note that the side aisles and transepts held scores of skulking fugitive soldiers, and that others of a like kidney were hiding in the shrine chapels about him. Not even when one of these came forth from the enclosure dedicated to St. Edmund the Martyr, and laid hand upon his shoulder, was he startled, but only looked up with wan indifference on his chalk-like face. "Where had ye that ring?" a deep voice asked, with tightened grip upon his shoulder to point the query. Hugh saw now that it was a stalwart young man who questioned him--and one of quality, despite the miry disorder of his dress and armor, and his dust-stained face. What could be discerned of this face was pleasing enough, too--but the lad's head was whirling and his tongue numbed at its roots. For his life he could not speak. "That ring!" the stranger went on excitedly. "I saw it on your hand whilst you held the cross--the which, now I think on't, saved our lives. Fear nothing, lad! Tell me, how came you by it? Perchance I am beholden to you for the letter last night--if so--will ye not speak, I say!" Hugh, with a despairing effort, gathered his wits, and asked faintly: "Are you the Sir Hereward, then, to whom 'twas writ?" "Aye, none other--what there is left of me. And writ ye the letter? And at whose behest?"