"How?" said the abbot, his features gathering into a portentous scowl.
"Nay, I beseech your reverence's grace, that you throw off all such disturbed apprehensions; for in troth a messenger of my bearing and capacity were worth a knight's ransom in these evil days, when the monks may not abroad with safety."
"Speak out. Remember I have yet the power to punish both insolence and treachery."
The abbot's lip curled upwards, pale and quivering with rage, not unmixed with apprehension.
"Grammercy," said the stranger, with a provokingly careless expression of cool and contemptuous defiance—"I cry you none—I am at present nameless. To work, to work, lord abbot. Thou hast holden back too long; and there is a shrewd suspicion abroad of thine integrity in the good cause. Hold!" said he, rising, as the reverend prelate was on the point of summoning his attendants; "I am not thy prisoner! Impotent, I would crook my finger thus, and thou shouldest crouch at my bidding. Nay, these be evil days, I say again; and more strange things may come to pass than bearding a lordly abbot in his den!"
Great was the astonishment of Paslew. The stranger stood proudly erect; his arms were folded, and a withering glance shot from beneath his brows. Even John Paslew, unused to a sense of inferiority before his fellow-men, felt cowed before him. For the first time, in all likelihood, he knew not how or what to answer. The stranger interrupted this painful silence.
"Since the monks are forbidden to be out a-gadding, the cowl and scapulary might have found some hindrance over the moors from Kirkstall. With my hawk and bearing-pole, I can follow on to the sport without let or question." The latter part of this speech seemed to throw some light on the purpose for which this messenger had been selected. Paslew was preparing for a further inquiry, when he was again interrupted.
"I tell thee, a courier of my condition may go free, though nameless. But to business—Norfolk is tampering with our credulity. He thinks to gain our time to his advantage: but the work must again be urged forward. Yet lack we thy aid. May
we depend on its being faithfully rendered? We must have no lukewarm allies in the rear of our camp."
The stranger drew from beneath his inner vest a crucifix, with the representation of a chalice and of the five wounds of Christ.