"Dark, ill-favoured," volunteered Hugh. "Oh, well enough dressed, I grant you"—this in reply to an objection from Edith—"but I liked not the looks of their leader."
"Whence come they?" inquired Prior Thomas. Foreigners were seldom seen in that out-of-the-way corner of England.
"They did not say."
"No clue to their race?"
"The leader swore 'by the Bodyless Ones,'" suggested Edith.
Hugh gave her an admiring glance.
"Now, that is a clever maid," he said. "I never remembered it."
"It sounds schismatical," commented Prior Thomas doubtfully. "Ay, I suspect that to be a wickedness of the heretics of the Eastern church. Too bad! When you first spoke I had hoped they might be travellers from Rome, who could give us word of the Holy Apostle and his Cardinals. Ah, well, 'tis passing strange if they have come all this way to England from Outremer."
A light flooded Edith's face.
"Oh," she exclaimed, leaping to her feet, "and if they are come from Constantinople, do you think it may be they bring word of my father?"