One corner of Denise’s glade was still steeped in sunlight when Grimbald and his men came from under the beech trees. They could see that both the wicket gate and the cell door stood open. Grimbald dismounted at the wicket, and leaning on Oswald’s shoulder, went up the path towards the cell. They were close to the threshold when a brownish thing flew forth into their faces, screamed, and sped away on noiseless wings. It was only a great owl, but Oswald had covered his face with his arm like one who fears a blow. “Assuredly it was the devil, Father!” said he, uncovering a pair of round and credulous eyes. Grimbald pushed on alone and entered the cell. One glance showed him that it was empty. He saw the rough bed with the coverlet spread awry, the wooden settle, the hutch where Denise had kept her clothes, the great water-jar in the corner. In the cupboard he found nothing but a dry loaf, a drinking horn, and the lamp that she had used. There seemed no sign of violence, nor even of a hurried flight. Grimbald stood there awhile considering, and then went out into the gathering dusk. It seemed probable to him that Denise had not been in the cell for some days, for was not the bread dry and the water-jar empty? He walked about the garden, turning his beak of a nose this way and that like an eagle, his weakness and his broken bone forgotten in the unravelling of this coil. The little lodge built of faggots where Denise had kept her tools and wood, enlightened him no further, and he was ruffling his brows over it when he heard Oswald calling. The man had caught all Grimbald’s spirit of unrest, just as a dog catches the moods of his master, and searching the ground he had found hoof marks on the grass. Grimbald found him kneeling outside the wattle fence, pointing at something that lay across a grass tussock, something that glistened like a few shreds from a woman’s hair. Oswald went on his hands and knees with his face close to the turf. He beat to and fro awhile, crawled forward across the glade, lay almost flat a moment, and then started up with an eager cry. He had found the fresh print of a horse’s hoofs in the grass under the fringe of a tree whose boughs nearly touched the ground. Grimbald went to see what Oswald had to show him. Dusk was falling fast, and they both stooped low over the marks in the grass. But Oswald started up on his haunches and sniffed the air like a dog. “Hist!” His eyes dilated as he turned his head to and fro, staring into the deepening gloom under the trees. Something was moving out yonder. They heard one bough strike another, a dead branch crack, the faint brushing of feet through leaves and grass. Oswald laid a hand on the knife at his belt; his teeth showed between snarling lips.