that put a torch to Cranwell Towers, for now the gold you need
is lacking to you, and therefore all your grand schemes will fail, and
you'll be buried in their ruin, as you thought we were in Cranwell."

The Abbot, who had listened to this long and bitter speech in patience,
groaned again.

"You are a clever woman," he said; "we understand each other, coming
from the same blood. You know the case; what is your counsel to me now?"

"That which you will not take, being foredoomed for your sins. Still
I'll give it honestly. Set the Lady Cicely free, restore her lands,
confess your evil doings. Fly the kingdom before Cromwell turns on
you and Henry finds you out, taking with you all the gold that you can
gather, and bribe the Emperor Charles to give you a bishopric in Granada
or elsewhere--not near Seville, for reasons that you know. So shall you
live honoured, and one day, after you have been dead a long while and
many things are forgotten, perchance be beatified as Saint Clement of
Blossholme."

The Abbot looked at her reflectively.

"If I sought safety only and old age comforts your counsel might be
good, but I play for higher stakes."

"You set your head against them," broke in Emlyn.

"Not so, woman, for in any case that head must win. If it stays upon my
shoulders it will wear an archbishop's mitre, or a cardinal's hat, or
perhaps something nobler yet; and if it parts from them, why, then a
heavenly crown of glory."

"Your head? _Your_ head?" exclaimed Emlyn, with a contemptuous laugh.

"Why not?" he answered gravely. "You chance to know of some errors of
my youth, but they are long ago repented of, and for such there is
plentiful forgiveness," and he crossed himself. "Were it not so, who
would escape?"

Emlyn, who had been standing all this while, sat herself down, set her
elbows on the table and rested her chin upon her clenched hands.

"True," she said, looking him in the eyes; "none of us would escape.
But, Clement Maldon, how about the unrepented errors of your age? Sir
John Foterell, for instance; Sir Christopher Harflete, for instance;
my Lady Cicely, for instance; to say nothing of black treason and a few
other matters?"

"Even were all these charges true, which I deny, they are no sins,
seeing that they would have been done, every one of them, not for my own
sake, but for that of the Church, to overset her enemies, to rebuild her
tottering walls, to secure her eternally in this realm."

"And