"I like not the sound of it," retorted the other, as he retired. From a distance, however, he continued to cast suspicious glances in their direction. Bewildered, the girl looked from one of the alleged controverters to the other. Who was this starveling the jester seemed to know? Again were they conversing in the language of the monastery, and their colloquy led to a conclusion as unexpected as it was startling.
"What if we leave the inn now?" asked the jester.
"They would prevent you."
"Who is the leader?"
"The man with the boar," answered the scamp-student. "But it is the morio who usually kills their victims."
The jester glanced at the colossal monster, repugnant in deformity, and then at the girl, who was tapping impatiently on the table with her white fingers. The fool's color came and went; what human strength might stand against that frightful prodigy of nature?
"Is there no way to escape?" he asked.
"Alas! I can but warn; not advise," said the scholar. "Already the leader suspects me."
A half-shiver ran through him. In the presence of actual and seemingly assured death he had appeared calm, resigned, a Socrates in temperament; before the mere prospect of danger the apprehensive thief-and-fugitive elements of his nature uprose. He would meet, when need be, the grim-visaged monster of dissolution with the dignity of a stoic, but by habit disdained not to dodge the shadow with the practised agility of a filcher and scamp. So the lower part of his moral being began to cower; he glanced furtively at the company.
"Yes; I am sure I have put my own neck in it," he muttered. "I must devise a way to save it. I have it. We must seem to quarrel." And rising, he closed his book deliberately.