mesne, methinks," De Lacy muttered.

"Aye! too far to be passed over without report to His Majesty. Where
Urswicke goes his mistress sends him--and lately she has but one object
in life: to make her son the King of England."

"And like enough will succeed only in making him shorter by a head," De
Lacy responded.

Meanwhile Urswicke had greeted the Abbot and dismounting had turned his
horse over to his two attendants--who were neither squires nor yet
ordinary servants, and who doubtless could either fight or pray as
occasion demanded. Their dress partook of the style of their master,
who wore the ordinary riding costume of a Knight, even to the golden
spurs; the only marks of his clerical calling being his short cropped
hair and the string of beads about his neck with the pendant crucifix.
His frame was angular and above the ordinary height. His face was long
and narrow, with a hawk-like nose, pointed chin, thin, straight lips,
prominent cheek bones and deep-set grey eyes that glittered and chilled
like those of a snake. He swept the others from helm to spur with a
single glance, and Aymer saw his eyes fasten for an instant on the Ring
of the Boar.

But if Urswicke's countenance were forbidding, not so was his voice.
Its clear, sweet tones were in such sharp contrast to the fell face
that De Lacy was startled into showing his surprise. And the priest
noticed it, as he had many times before in others, and smiled in
indifferent contempt.

During the refection, that was served immediately, Urswicke was most
amiable and paid particular attention to De Lacy and De Wilton. By
most astute and careful conversation he sought to draw from them
information as to the King's programme during the Autumn; how long he
would remain at Pontefract, and whither his course when he left there.
Yet with all the art of an adept, he risked no direct question and
displayed no particular interest in these matters, when by his very
manoeuvring they were touched upon. But De Wilton had been bred in the
atmosphere of Gloucester's household and De Lacy had been trained by
years of service amid Italian and French plotters; and they both
quickly discerned that the Abbot and the Priest-Knight were working
together, and they only smiled and played them off against each other;
and at the end of the meal, what the two had learned of Richard's
intentions was likely to be of scant profit to either Henry Tudor or
his scheming mother.

"What a pr