“See here, Mr. Torridon,” he said, shaking the papers on to the table, “here is a story-box for the ladies. Draw your chair to the fire.”
Ralph felt an increasing repugnance for the man; but he said nothing; and brought up his seat to the wide hearth on which the logs burned pleasantly in the cold little room.
The priest lifted the bundle on to his lap, crossed his legs comfortably, with a glass of wine at his elbow, and began to read.
For a while Ralph wondered how the man could have the effrontery to call his notes by the name of evidence. They consisted of a string of obscene guesses, founded upon circumstances that were certainly compatible with guilt, but no less compatible with innocence. There was a quantity of gossip gathered from country-people and coloured by the most flagrant animus, and even so the witnesses did not agree. Such sentences as “It is reported in the country round that the prior is a lewd man” were frequent in the course of the reading, and were often the chief evidence offered in a case.
In one of the most categorical stories, Ralph leaned forward and interrupted.
“Forgive me, Master Layton,” he said, “but who is Master What’s-his-name who says all this?”
The priest waved the paper in the air.
“A monk himself,” he said, “a monk himself! That is the cream of it.”
“A monk!” exclaimed Ralph.