"Father," said Hyla, "I did kill the divell, sure enough. With two arrows—'One for Frija,' I said, and 'this for Elgifu.' I have blood guilt upon me."
The man in the bows lifted his right hand and stretched out two fingers and a thumb. They saw he was a priest. Then he said the Confiteor:
"Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus, et dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam aeternam."
And every man in the boat answered "Amen."
Then the priest changed his tone, and became brisk and business-like.
"You have lost your oars, fools," he said. "Or, perhaps, you brought none. Should'st have remembered the lake. Take a stern rope and we'll tow ye home like knights. Now then, brethren, ye have heard the news, God in His mercy hath sent power to these poor men and aided their arm, so that they have slain the burner of His priests and ravisher of poor maids. God has answered our prayers. Sing we to Him then a song of thanksgiving. Sing up every man-jack of you, for God has wonderfully dealt with these poor men."
And then with a sudden crash of sound they began to sing the greatest of all hymns, the Te Deum.
"Te Deum Laudamus: te Dominum confitemur," pulsed and rang through the night in glad appeal. So fervent and joyous was the song, the monks sang it so merrily, and withal it was to such a good and jocund tune, that Hyla was overcome entirely. He knelt in the swiftly-moving punt sobbing like a little child. Once he raised his face to heaven, and behold, there was a bright white moon silvering all the sky!
Very soon they came to the opposite shore of the lake, indeed, before the final "In te Domine."
The shore sloped gradually down to the lake's edge in a smooth sweep of grass sward which met the water without any break. A few yards up the slope high trees fringed a road which led to the Abbey on the hill-top. Icomb was, in fact, a low island about half a mile square. Its highest point was hardly out of the fen mists. Round about in the county, the place was always spoken of as an Abbey, though it was, as a matter of fact, no more than a Priory, and of no great importance at that.