"I did not dream they fled as they rode down the street to the river,"
observed the second. "They did go slowly enough, and the young lord
looked about him curiously and unafraid."
"By that thou mayest know he was a lord, and this drunken fool speaketh
true," returned Elfric. "The better the blood, the less of fear; so
hath my grandsire said."
Though Walter Skinner had commanded the innkeeper and the grooms to
keep what he called his confidence on pain of his vengeance, what he
had said flew abroad. And wherever the little spy appeared that
afternoon he seemed to arouse much curiosity. "The king must be put to
it for help when he employeth such a one," commented a cooper.
"Tut, man!" was the reply. "What careth the king who doeth his pleasure
so it be done? It looketh not like to be done, though, with this man
for the doer of it. Why, who but a fool seeing those he sought had
three good hours the start of him would give them four and twenty
more?"
The cooper shrugged his shoulders. "I tell thee, Peter of the forge,"
he said, "that I care not if the king's will be never done, for it is a
bad will.
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