The boy's eyes filled with tears; he dropped on one knee, and seizing Wulf's hand placed it to his lips, and then without a word sped away, halting a hundred yards off till Osgod should join him.
"You have made a good choice," Wulf said; "the boy is wholly trustworthy, and unless his face belies him he is as shrewd as he is faithful. My only fear in the matter is, that he may be over rash in his desire to carry out the trust we have given him. Warn him against that, and tell him that should he be discovered and killed it would upset all our plans."
CHAPTER XV. — A MEETING BY THE RIVER.
During the three days that elapsed between Ulf's being set upon the track of Walter Fitz-Urse and the departure of the king for the North, the boy had no news to report to Osgod. The young Norman had not left the bishop's palace alone. He had accompanied the prelate several times when he went abroad, and had gone out with some of his countrymen who still held office at the court. In one or other of the disguises Wulf had suggested, the boy had hung about the gate of the bishop's palace until late in the evening, but Walter Fitz-Urse had not come out after dark. On the day before starting, Wulf was with Osgod when the latter met the boy at the rendezvous.
After he heard Ulf's report Wulf said: "As we leave to-morrow this is the last report you will have to make to us. So far it would seem that there is nothing whatever to give grounds for suspicion, and if, after a few days, you find that the Norman still remains quietly at the bishop's, there will be no occasion for you to continue your watch until the time is approaching for the king's return."
"Yes, my lord. But I cannot say surely that he does not go out of an evening."
"Why, I thought you said that he certainly had not done so?"
"No, my lord; I said only that I had not seen him. He has certainly not gone out through the great gates in his Norman dress, but that it seems to me shows very little. As the bishop's guest he would pass out there, but there is another entrance behind that he might use did he wish to go out unobserved. Even at the main entrance I cannot tell but that, beneath the cowl and frock of one of the many monks who pass in and out, Walter Fitz-Urse may not be hidden. He would scarce go about such a business as we suspect in his dress as a Norman noble, which is viewed with little favour here in London, and would draw attention towards him, but would assume, as I do, some disguise in which he could go about unremarked—it might be that of a monk, it might be that of a lay servitor of the palace."