"So you are here," said the bishop. He spoke with inconvenience, as one front tooth had been knocked out and another broken. Unless he drew down his upper lip, his words issued from his mouth indistinctly, accompanied by a disagreeable hiss. "Hah!—have the bumpkins paid up so readily that you are here with the money? How many marks have they had to disgorge?"
"Your fatherliness," said the chaplain, "I have brought nothing with me save unsatisfactory tidings."
"What! They will not pay?"
"They can be made to find the silver," said Cadell; "that I do not doubt. For centuries those men of Caio have prospered and have hoarded. Other lands have been wasted, not theirs; other stores pillaged, theirs have been untouched."
"It is well. They will bear further squeezing. But what ails thee? Thou lookest as though thou hadst bitten into a crab-apple."
"I have come touching the miracle."
"Ah! to be sure—the miracle. I have sent despatches containing complete accounts thereof to his Majesty King Henry, and to my late gracious mistress, the Queen. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who consecrated me at Westminster, looked as sour as do you. He would fain have had the consent of the Pope, as father of Christendom, but the King would brook no delay, and the Archbishop was not so stubborn as to hold out—glad in this, to get a bishop of St. David's to swear submission to the stool of Augustine. I have sent him as well a narrative of the miracle; it will salve his conscience to see that Heaven is manifestly with me. Moreover, I have had my crow over Urban of Llandaff. He has not a miracle to boast of to bolster up his authority."
"My gracious master and lord, I grieve to have to assure you that there has been some mistake in the matter for which I am in no way blameworthy."
"How a mistake?" asked Bernard testily.
"There has been no miracle."