“For your prayers—if they are honest—I thank you,” he said. “I will stand on guard against the mischances that a woman’s prayers may hint at.” She looked at him meaningly. “Turn your back to no bush.” “So!” “A vest of ring mail under a doublet may turn a knife or an arrow.” He stood a moment, and then went out from before her thoughtfully, without uttering a word. Father Merlin overtook the Polecat where the heathland sloped down towards the White Lodge valley. The beggar stood to one side and made the friar a reverence, his red eyes twinkling under the edge of his hood. “A blessing, holy father.” Merlin stopped and blessed him as though he had never set eyes on the man before. “How runs the road, my son?” “Down yonder, father, stands a goodly house, and Fulk of the Forest dwells therein.” Merlin crossed himself. “My son,” said he, “there may be that work to be done which I told you of. Follow, but see that no man mistakes you for my follower.” The Polecat pulled his forelock. “I will be there, but not seen, holy father, like a toad under a stone.” Merlin marched on, but at the White Lodge he found only Dame Margaret and her wench, and John the forester feathering arrows in the porch. Merlin could be as soft and debonair as any king’s chaplain, and a cup of wine and a cold pie were brought out for his good cheer. Dame Margaret was at her orfrey work in the parlour, and Merlin was well content to leave her there and to talk with John the forester in the porch. A second cup of hippocras was to be had for the asking, and the grey friar had much to say of the evil temper of the times and of the villainy of those lewd and meddlesome folk who grumbled because the king and the lords and gentles needed money. Merlin discovered what he wished to discover, whither Fulk of the Forest had gone. “For,” said he, “I never miss speech with a gentleman in whatsoever parts I may be travelling. I follow in the steps of St. Francis, and all living things were St. Francis’s children.” He left drunken John much edified and a little redder about the nose, and set out westwards with his cowl drawn down and his beads in his hand. Beyond the gorse lands by Stoneygate, where the world was all green and gold, he came to the rich meadows by the vachery and sat himself down under a wind-blown thorn. It was not for Merlin’s eyes to overlook the cowherd or bibulcus in leather jerkin and leggings standing by the vachery gate and talking to a man on a rough roan horse. The man on the horse was dressed in green, and the liripipes of his hood were blue and white; moreover, he carried a bow, and a horn slung to a blue and white baldric—colours that were the Duke of Lancaster’s, even of John of Gaunt.