“Run, run,” answers the abbot. “Gart, my son, call the atheist to dinner. I’ll hit him with a spoon on the forehead; an atheist understands a sermon best of all if you hit him with a spoon.”
He waits and mutters:
“The boy has commenced to ring the bells again. He does it for himself, the rogue. If we did not lock the steeple, they would pray there from morning until night.”
Haggart goes over to Khorre, near whom Dan is sitting.
“Khorre! Let us go to eat—the priest called you.”
“I don’t want to go, Noni.”
“So? What are you going to do here on shore?”
“I will think, Noni, think. I have so much to think to be able to understand at least something.”
Haggart turns around silently. The abbot calls from the distance:
“He is not coming? Well, then, let him stay there. And Dan—never call Dan, my son”—says the priest in his deep whisper, “he eats at night like a rat. Mariet purposely puts something away for him in the closet for the night; when she looks for it in the morning, it is gone. Just think of it, no one ever hears when he takes it. Does he fly?”