You must have rest and refreshment before you again set forth." "I thank you, no," replied the stranger.

"I must ride on, without delay.

I bid you farewell, Lady; and I do but wish the service, which a strange chance has enabled me to render to the Knight, had been of greater importance and had held more of risk or danger." He bowed low, and departed.

A few moments later he was riding out at the gates, and making for the northward road.
Had Brother Philip chanced to be at hand, he could not have failed to note that the swarthy stranger was mounted upon the fastest nag in the Bishop's stable.
For a life of lawlessness, rapine, and robbery, does not debar a man from keeping an oath sworn, out of honest gratitude, in cleaner, better days.
Left alone, Mora passed on to the terrace and, in the clearer light, examined this soiled and much inscribed missive.
To her amazement she recognised the well-known script of Symon, Bishop of Worcester.

How many a letter had reached her hands addressed in these neat characters.
Yet Hugh had left her, and gone upon this ride of many days to Worcester in order to see the Bishop, because he had received a letter telling him, without sufficient detail, a matter of importance.
Probably the letter she now held in her hands should have reached him first.