The outer court with its great garden still lay before him, and he followed the paved track, praying God to keep all officious fools at a distance. Fifty paces, twenty paces, ten paces, and he was at the outer gate, with the cypresses black behind him, and no betrayal as yet. The gate still stood open, though it was closed at sunset, and to Aymery it was an arch of gold, a dark tunnel way with a tympanum cut from the evening sky. He was half through it, when a lounger at the guard-room door lurched forward and caught him roughly by the cloak. It may have been a mere challenge to horse-play or the grip of a swift suspicion. Aymery did not wait to decide the matter, but struck the man across the face with the knife, broke loose, and ran. CHAPTER XV They brought the Red Saint to Battle when the meadows were a sheet of gold, and the thorn trees white above the lush green grass. Dom Silvius and two of the Abbey servants came for her in the morning, bringing a white palfrey to carry her on the way. Denise had kept vigil all that night, praying, and striving to quiet a heart that would not be quieted. And when the dawn had come she had gone out into the garden and stood there silently, looking at the familiar things that had mingled with her life. Yet very strange had garden, hermitage, and woodland seemed to Denise that morning; the strangeness of leave-taking was over them, and the sadness of farewell. Even the rose trees that had been given her, and which she had cherished, had seemed to catch her memory, with their thorns. Memories, memories! Some infinitely dear; others, brutal and full of shame. The thatch would rot, the walls crumble, the garden beckon back the wilderness. And a great bitterness had fallen upon her, because of what she was losing, and of what she had suffered, and yet might suffer. She had felt glad in measure when she had heard the tinkling bells on Dom Silvius’s bridle as he had come riding through the beech wood. Her love of the place had hurt her. The very stones had cried out, and the pansies had scowled at her as she went down the path. At Battle there was joy that day, and a ringing of bells, for Abbot Reginald had ordered it. And the song of the bells went over the woodlands that gleamed or grew gloomy as the clouds drifted. The cuckoo called; green herbs rose to the knees; the meadows rippled with gold; the oaks were in leaf. Over the blue hills, and through slumbrous valleys filled with haze, Silvius and Denise came to the Abbey lands.