ands in his sleeves
he walked off disdainfully, his jaw thrust before him.

"Like a cow-catcher," Mark thought with a smile.

The Bishop of Alberta was a dear old gentleman with silvery hair and a
complexion as fresh and pink as a boy's. With his laced rochet and
purple biretta he lent the little matchboarded chapel an exotic
splendour when he sat in a Glastonbury chair beside the altar during the
Office. The more ritualistic of the brethren greatly enjoyed giving him
reverent genuflexions and kissing his episcopal ring. Brother Raymond's
behaviour towards him was like that of a child who has been presented
with a large doll to play with, a large doll that can be dressed and
undressed at the pleasure of its owner with nothing to deter him except
a faint squeak of protest such as the Bishop himself occasionally
emitted.

CHAPTER XXV

SUSCIPE ME, DOMINE

Brother Anselm was to arrive on the vigil of St. Lawrence. Normally
Brother Walter would have been sent to meet him with the Abbey cart at
the station three miles away. But Brother Walter was in a state of such
excitement over his near promotion to postulant that it was not
considered safe to entrust him with the pony. So Mark was sent in his
place. It was a hot August evening with thunder clouds lying heavy on
the Malford woods when Mark drove down the deep lanes to the junction,
wondering what Brother Anselm would be like and awed by the imagination
of Brother Anselm's thoughts in the train that was bringing him from
Aldershot to this momentous date of his life's history. Almost before he
knew what he was saying Mark was quoting from _Romeo and Juliet_:

_My mind misgives_
_Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,_
_Shall bitterly begin his fearful date_
_With this night's revels._

"Now why should I have thought that?" he asked himself, and he was just
deciding that it was merely a verbal sequence of thought when the first
far-off peal of thunder muttered a kind of menacing contradiction of so
easy an explanation. It would be raining soon; Mark thumped the pony's
angular haunches, and tried to feel cheerful in the oppressive air.

Brother Anselm did not appear as Mark had pictured him. Instead of the
lithe enthusiast with flaming eyes he saw a heavily built man with
blunted features, wearing powerful horn spectacles, his expression
morose, his movements ungainly. He had, however, a mellow and strangely
sympatheti