"But my lady still sleeps softly," objected the good woman.
"Then let her know when she awakens that thy son hath gone to Bletsoe for aid, and that help she shall have shortly, and means of travelling hence," said Father Bertram.
Mistress Hodges returned to the sacristy.
"My lady is awakened," she said. "She heard your voices. Ye should have spoken more softly. She needs yet rest."
"Go thou then to the door," said Bertram to the lay-brother. "She knows thy voice, but I am a stranger. Tell her what thou purposest to do."
The Benedictine did as he was bid. Standing at the half-open door, he announced in a few words that he was off to Bletsoe for help.
Aliva, barely aroused, sank back again into slumber, murmuring words of thanks to her messenger.
"And now haste thee on thy road," said the priest to the lay-brother; "I myself will watch the chapel door."
The latter set off. He did not again attempt to cross the bridge, still guarded as he imagined by De Breauté and his men, or he would now have found it clear of sentinels. He made his way along the right bank of the river to the ford at Milton in the dark quietness of the small hours that precede the dawn. But ere he reached the spot which had so well-nigh proved fatal to him some few weeks before, the birds had begun to twitter in the brushwood and the sedge, and on the eastern horizon
"Lightly and brightly breaks away
The morning from her mantle gray."