And messengers to Normandy had been sent week by week, but none had of late returned. Day by day our hearts grew more anxious as we saw the number of Moorish ships in our waters, and we began to fear that they and their letters had fallen into those evil hands.
And then our worst fears were realized. It was late one evening, I stood at the cloister gate, and on the white road that led to the château I saw a figure I seemed to know; but kind heavens, what a figure I It was good Brother Ralf indeed! But his white skirts were slit in rags, his ankles bleeding with sore wounds; he stooped and tottered as he walked, and, horror! that women's sons should do such deeds, his ears had been hacked and hewn away, and his head hung bloody on his breast whereon a strip of parchment said—
The envoy of Michael to William returns from Geoffroy to Michael. More such will follow, and Geoffroy himself ere long cometh to do unto Michael likewise for his courtesies. Salut.
In a horror I summoned up the brothers, as they trooped out from compline-prayer, and two of the stoutest bore Ralf gently to the refectory. There, drugs and good care brought the life back to his eyes, and he smiled on us as though half in fear that we were foes.
We would have had him speak; but he spake not. And the abbot came, calm and unmoved yet, but a glitter of keen light kept glancing lightning-like from his eyes, and he said, as he stood by the settle whereon he lay—
"Speak, dear son—speak to us thy brethren."
Ralf struggled, and raised his heavy hand, and but babbled without meaning.
A quick burst of colour rushed into the abbot's face. Calm, stately, still, with a very blaze of anger hidden in his eyes, that we trembled again, he stood with that red glow in his cheeks.
"He speaks not—for he is distraught," he said. "What shall God do to men that rob their brothers of His noblest gift—the gift of reason?"
For a moment he stood in prayer, and then raised his shapely hand and blessed him thrice, and then bid us bear him to the sick-house, where sisters nursed him tenderly to life, and won him back much of strength and health—but never the gift, the abbot called God's noblest gift—for he had left that for ever behind in the château on the hill.