"I like it not," he growled. "What enemy have you, Messer Hugh, would wish to have a knife stuck in you?"
"None that I know of," returned Hugh, but the feeling of uneasiness which had irked him before made his answer seem a mockery to him.
That squat figure, the bestial, sullen face, the tarnished, cast-off tinsel of its garments—with or without cause, they brought to his mind the gaudy array of strangers he had last seen ducking and scraping before Mocenigo in Blancherive courtyard.
He cast the idea from him as preposterous.
"Come," he said abruptly. "We have to talk with Prior Thomas, and the hour grows late."
Throughout their ride to the Priory gates, Ralph kept his horse at his master's cropper and his longbow was bent and ready at his back. But they met no one, until the porter at the gate hailed them and asked their business, for monasteries, like castles and walled towns, were chary of admitting callers from the night.
Prior Thomas listened to Hugh's account and questioned Ralph.
"There was naught upon him, you say, save these markings, that he might be known by?" he ended.
"Naught," replied Hugh.
"Are there strangers in these parts—— But yes. You yourself told me of meeting them this morning on the road for Blancherive."