"Know her? to be sure I do," replied the old woman. "A blessing upon her pretty heart, she's been up here many a time, and I've carried a message for her before now; and she gave me some silver pieces, and a bodkin--I've got it somewhere about me now," and she began to feel in her bodice for poor Kate Greenly's gift.
"Then is she not here now?" said Richard de Ashby.
"No, no," answered the old woman, "she was here an hour before sunset, but she went away again. Oh, I know how it is!" she cried, as if a sudden thought had struck her--"you are the gentleman whom good Father Mark has been preaching to her to run away from, because you are living in a state of naughtiness. These friars are so hard upon young folks; and now you'd give another gold piece, like this, I'd swear, to know where she is, and get her to come back again."
"Ay, would I," replied Richard de Ashby, "two."
"Well, well," continued the old woman, "I know something, if I choose to say. She is not in Nottingham, but not far off."
"Can you show me where she is?" demanded Richard de Ashby.
"Not to-night--not to-night!" cried the old woman. "Sancta Maria! I would not go out to-night all that way--not for a purse full of gold. Why it is up, after you get out of the gates, through Back Lane, and down the Thorny Walk till you come to the edge of Thorny Wood, and then you turn to the right by old Gaffer Brown's cottage, and, round under the chapel, and along by the bank where the fountain is, and then up by the new planting, just between it and the fern hill; and then if you go straight on, and take the first to the left, and the fourth to the right, it brings you to old Sweeting's hut, where she has gone to live with him, and his good dame."
Richard de Ashby saw no possible means of discovering the way from the old lady's description, and he was about to propose some other means of arranging the affair, when, with a shrewd wink of the eye, she said--"I am going out to her in the grey of the morning myself, and if you have any message to send her, I can take it; or, if a gentleman chooses to wait at the gate, and walk into the country after an old woman, who can help it?--I mustn't go with you through the town, you know, for that would make a scandal."
"I understand--I understand!" said Richard; "and if by your means I get her back again, you shall have two gold pieces such as that."
"Oh, an open hand gets all it wants," replied the priest's maid--"a close fist keeps what it has got; an open hand gets all it wants. 'Tis a true proverb, Sir Knight--'tis a true proverb. At the north gate, you know, in the grey of the morning. Wait till you see me come out with my basket, and then don't say a word, but come after."