Outside on a low stool, engaged in her spinning, sat a lovely young girl, in whose sweet, open countenance, touched with a gentle gravity beyond her years, the poor priest recognized Matilda Westel.
He inquired after the refugee and was told that he was resting, and that at daybreak he was to be taken to the highway and instructed how to make the next town before nightfall. His garb had been neatly repaired, and a new staff found for him. Annys offered to give him a rosary.
"Would thy grandmother care to see me?" he asked.
A quick look passed from the girl to Richard, who stood by her side.
"Tell him," she begged the young man, who seemed to hesitate how to begin.
"In what way can I serve thee?" Annys asked.
"Matilda's grandmother," began Richard, "can read only very little. She has picked up enough to read only a few texts which that poor priest of whom I spake to you taught her by heart. It has ever been her desire to read further in the Book."
"And if it be not too much trouble," continued the girl, "I had hoped perhaps that I might be taught also to read, that my eyes might save grandmother's old and tired ones."
"Yea, that she might be her eyes, as she has been for years her head and feet and hands," exclaimed Richard, heartily, and Annys caught the look of love that illumined his face as his eyes rested on her. It heartened the poor priest to be in the presence of an affection which was so far removed from the morbid hysterical emotion of the monks and saints, whose confessions had always disgusted rather than edified him.
"Shall we go in?" ventured Annys, and, receiving the young girl's permission, he entered the low door and discovered a wrinkled old dame seated on a low stool poring over a copy of Wyclif's Vulgate, crooning over to herself certain lines which she had evidently learned by heart.