"Nay, nay," said Mary Markham, in the same low tone; "do not let that stop you, noble friend. There may be some good amongst even them."
"Well, be it as you will, Mary," answered the old knight; "she must be better than she looks, to do as she has done. Come, poor thing--you shall go home with us, and there tell us more. Wait till I have finished the purchase of this harness, and we will go along back to Westminster; though how to take you through the streets in that guise, I do not well know."
"Get a boat, sir, at a landing by the Temple," said Launcelot Plasse, "and send the horses by land."
"A good thought," replied the knight; and thus it was arranged, the whole party returning to the armourer's shop, and thence, after the bargain was made, and all directions were given, proceeding to the water-side, where a boat was soon procured, which bore them speedily to the landing-place at Westminster.
CHAPTER XV.
[THE PILGRIM.]
One morning, while the events which I have lately detailed were passing in the city of London, a man in a long brown gown, with a staff in his hand, a cross upon his shoulder, and a cockle-shell in his hat, walked slowly, and apparently wearily, into the little village of Abbot's Ann, and sat himself down on a stone bench before the reeve's door.
Recognising the pilgrim from some far distant land as she looked out of her casement window, the good dame, with the charitable spirit of the age, took him forth some broken victuals and a cup of ale, and inquired what news he brought from over sea. The wanderer, however, seemed more inclined to ask than answer questions, and was apparently full of wonder and amazement at the tragic story--which he had just heard, he said--of the death of the Lady Catherine Beauchamp. He prayed the good woman, for love and for charity's sake, to tell him all about it; and she, very willing to gratify him--for every country gossip gains dignity while telling a horrible tale--began at the beginning of the affair, as far as she knew it; and related how, just on the night after the last Glutton mass, as Childe Richard of Woodville, their lord's nephew, was riding down the road with a friend, he heard a shriek, and, on hurrying to the water, found the body of the poor young lady floating down the stream; how the two gentlemen bore her to the chanter's cottage; and how marks were found upon her person, which seemed to prove that she had come to her death by unfair means.
"And has the murderer been discovered, sister?" inquired the old pilgrim.
"Alas, no!" replied the reeve's wife; "there have been whispers about, but nothing certain."