"The matter of the words was that," said Humphrey; "yet I do think the slaves subjoined that if your lordship knew not who sent the gift, your lordship would soon know right well. But as the churl was walking away while he was speaking, I cannot say that these were his ipsissima verba."
"Janitor," quoth the abbat, "knowest thou what festival of mother church it is we have celebrated this day?"
"The feast of the blessed Saint Edbert," responded Humphrey, with a genuflexion and an ora pro nobis.
"Then from this day forward," quoth the lord abbat, "take not and admit not within these gates any donation or thing whatsoever from men that thou knowest not, and that run from our door instead of tarrying to refresh themselves in the hospitium."
"That last unwonted and unnatural fact," quoth the cellarer, "ought to have warned thee, oh Humphrey, that there was mischief in the corbel."
"But," replied the janitor, "it was past the time of even' prayer, nay, after supper-time; and they did place the basket in my hands, and vanish away all in a minute, and I could not throw the corbel after them, nor could I leave it outside the gate. But mischief did I suspect none."
Humphrey being dismissed, the elders of our house debated what had best be done with the child, which had not ceased crying all this while, and which moved my heart to pity, for it was a beautiful babe to look upon, and it seemed right hungry, and witchcraft could there be none about it; for our sub-prior, who had adventured to take it up in his arms, had espied a little golden cross round its neck, and an Agnus Dei sewed to its clothes. The lord abbat, whose heart was always kind to man, woman, and child, nay, even unto the beasts in the stable and field, and the hounds of the chase, said that albeit it had been cast into a wrong place, it was assuredly a sweet innocent and most Christian-looking child, and that as the hour was waxing very late, it would be well to keep it in the house until the morrow morn. But the sub-prior bade his lordship bethink himself of the sex of the child, and of the rigid rule of our order, which, in its strictest interpretation, would seem to imply that nothing of the sex feminine should ever abide by night within our cloisters. "In spite of its cross and agnus," subjoined the sour suspicious man, "I must opine that this piping baby hath been sent hither by some secret enemy, in order to bring down discredit and aspersions upon our community."
"But what, in the name of the Virgin, wouldst have us do with the little innocent?" said the abbat.
"Peradventure," quoth the sub-prior, "it were not badly done to set the brat afloat in its basket down the Kennet into Thamesis. It may ground among the rushes, and be found by the country people, or it may——"
"Brother," said the abbat, "thy heart is waxing as hard as the flint of our walls! I would not do that thing, or see it done, to escape all the calumnies which all the evil tongues of England could heap upon me."