"Aye so, Mother," returned he cheerily, setting to work with the forms.
He called her mother, for none other had he ever known: but the old woman was really the grandmother of the young man and the girls. The middle-aged woman was their one servant.
"There!" said Jack at length, glancing over the forms when the arrangement was finished. "Me reckoneth those shall be so many as we are like to have need."
"No more than custom is, Mother—without Will Sterys bring yon friend of his that he spake of t’other night. Very like he may."
"I wot not, Mother: only Will said he was one safe to be trusted."
Before the words were well out of Jack’s lips, a low knock came on the house-door—a peculiar knock; three little taps, a pause, two more.
"Here they come," said Jack, and darted to the door.
A somewhat motley assemblage dropped in by twos and threes. Here came a lame man on crutches; a blind man led by a girl; two wan, tired-looking women; a very old man, bent nearly double; another woman; a young man in his prime. All, however, had as yet one peculiarity—they were dressed in a style which indicated that many of the good things of this life had not come in their way. There was a pause while they spoke kind greetings to the family and each other: and then, at another low knock, Jack let in first one man, and a minute afterwards, two more. All the guests expected had evidently now arrived, for Jack bolted the door and returned to the kitchen.
The man who came by himself, first of the concluding three, proved to be a monk of the Order of St. Austin: a man of about thirty, spare and active, with keen dark eyes which looked as if they saw every thing at once. Coming in with uplifted hand in the traditional attitude of blessing, and "Christ’s peace be on all here!" he took his stand at a small table, and unfastened from his girdle one of those leather books bound with a projecting end and a knot, for the purpose of being carried in that manner. This he set down on the table, and waited a moment for the other two to appear.
These last arrivals were both wrapped in cloaks, as though they were anxious not to be recognised. The first, throwing his cloak off, showed that he was dressed in livery, in a style peculiar to the latter half of the Middle Ages. He wore a tabard, or loose short coat, something like a smock-frock in shape, but only reaching to the hips; with wide sleeves which ended at the elbow. The right half of this coat was blue; the left half blue and red in stripes, with yellow fleurs-de-lis worked on the blue stripes. On his left arm, just below the shoulder, was embroidered a silver cresset filled with red and yellow flames. In days when every servant bore his master’s badge, and every body knew whose badge it was, no one could doubt for a moment whence this man came. The fiery cresset, borne aloft on the silvered pole, was the familiar badge of the De Holands, Dukes of Exeter.
