"We can dispense with most rules—if there be good reason for it."
"Do you think, in the event of your getting tired of being here, among those who do not love you, that you could make room for me?"
"For you!" Cadell stared.
"Aye! I ought to have been chief here, only they passed me over for Pabo. I have a hereditary right to be both chief and priest in Caio."
Then Cadell laughed.
"You are a misshapen fool," he said; "dost think that Bishop Bernard would give thee such a place as this—to foment rebellion against him?"
"He might give it to me, if I undertook to do him a great service, and to bring the place under his feet."
"What service could such as you render?"
"Would not that be a service to bring all Caio into subjection. See! I doubt not that a good fat prebend would be more to your liking than this lost valley among the mountains, traversed by the Sarn Helen alone, which was a road frequented once when the Romans were here, and the gold-mines were worked, and Loventum was a city. But now—it is naught. Few use it."
Cadell mused on this astonishing proposal.