It had been early dawn when they had found Sir Arnold dead; it was toward evening when Gilbert and Dunstan followed a young Jew to the door of a Syrian house in a garden of the old quarter of the city, toward the Zion gate. All day they had searched Jerusalem, up and down, through the narrow streets of whitened houses, inquiring everywhere for a knight who had lately come with his one daughter, and no one could tell them anything; for Sir Arnold had paid well to find a retired house, where Beatrix might be safely guarded while he went out to seek Gilbert and kill him, and where he himself could hide if there were any pursuit. So they asked in vain, till at last they saw a boy sitting by the wayside on the hill of the Temple, weeping and lamenting in the Eastern fashion. The guide, who was also a Jew, asked him what had chanced, and he said that his father was gone on a journey, leaving him, his young son, in the house with his mother. And there had come a Christian knight with a daughter and her woman and certain servants, desiring to hire the house for a time because it was in a pleasant place; and they had let him have it, he promising by an interpreter to pay a great price; but he had not yet paid it. In the morning the young man had seen Christians carrying away the body of this knight to bury it; and he had been to the house, but the knight's servants would not let him in, and did not understand his speech, and threatened to beat him; and now he was afraid lest his father should come home unawares and take him and his mother to account for letting strangers use the house without even paying for it beforehand. When Gilbert saw that he had found what he sought, he first gave money to the boy, to encourage him, and bade the interpreter tell him to lead them all to the house, saying that Gilbert himself would enter, in spite of the servants. The boy took the money, and when he had measured Gilbert with his eye, he understood, and went before them with no more weeping; and the knight's step was light and quick with hope, for he had begun to doubt whether Beatrix were really in the city after all. The house was low and white, and stood at the end of a small garden in which there were palms, and spring flowers growing in straight lines between small hewn stones, laid so as to leave little trenches of earth between them. There was a hard path, newly swept, leading to the square door of the house, and on the doorpost were clearly written certain characters in Hebrew. Gilbert knocked on the door, not loudly, with the hilt of his dagger, but no one answered; and again louder, but there was no sound from within. Then he shook the door, trying whether it would open of itself by a push; but it was fast, and the two windows of the house that looked out on each side of the door were barred also.