A woman who was coming from the fountain bearing a jug of water on her head set down her jug upon the ground and knelt beside it. And the priest grew pale, for he recognized one of Agnes’s servants, and a nameless dread seized upon him, so that unconsciously he clasped the silver amphora tightly between his hands as though seeking there support.

The attendant crowd of boys grew larger as they approached the old hunter’s dwelling. This was a two-story cottage built of rough stone and standing a little back from the road on the side towards the valley; it had a single unglazed window and in front a small yard of bare earth enclosed by a low wall. The door stood open and the priest knew that the old man was lying fully dressed on a mat in the lower room; so he entered at once, reciting the prayers for the sick, whilst Antiochus closed the umbrella and rang his bell loudly to drive away the children as if they were flies. But the room was empty and the mat unoccupied; perhaps the old man had at last consented to go to bed or had been carried there in a dying condition. The priest pushed open the door of an inner room, but that too was empty; so, puzzled, he returned to the door, whence he saw the old man’s granddaughter limping down the road with a bottle in her hand. She had been to fetch the medicine.

‘Where is your grandfather?’ asked Paul, as the girl crossed herself on entering the house. She glanced at the empty mat and gave a scream, and the inquisitive boys immediately swarmed over the wall and round the door, engaging in a free fight with Antiochus, who tried to oppose their entrance, till Paul himself sternly bade them disperse.

‘Where is he? Where is he?’ cried the granddaughter, running from room to room, whereupon one of the boys, the last to join the crowd, sauntered up with his hands in his pockets and inquired casually, ‘Are you looking for the king? He went down there.’

‘Down where?’

‘Down there,’ repeated the boy, pointing with his nose towards the valley.

The girl rushed down the steep path and the boys after her: the priest signed to Antiochus to reopen the umbrella, and gravely and in silence the two returned to the church, whilst the villagers gathered together in wondering groups and the news of the sick man’s flight spread from mouth to mouth.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Paul was back again in his quiet dining-room, seated at the table and waited on by his mother. Fortunately there was now something, they dare talk about and the flight of King Nicodemus was being discussed. Having hastily deposited the silver amphora and other things taken out for the rite and doffed his red cope, Antiochus had run off to collect news. The first time he came back it was with a strange report; the old man had disappeared and his relations were said to have carried him off in order to get possession of his money.