pectant curiosity and looking down his long nose to give the
impression that it was the blush of innocence and modesty.

When, an hour or so later, he had had leisure to discover the meaning of
both terms, he came up to Mark and exclaimed:

"Oh, brother, how could you?"

"How could I what?" Mark asked.

"How could you let me think that it meant something much worse? Why,
it's nothing really. Just wandering monks."

"They annoyed our Holy Father," said Mark.

"Yes, they did seem to make him a bit ratty. Perhaps the translation
softened it down," surmised Brother Nicholas. "I'll get a dictionary
to-morrow."

The bell for solemn silence clanged, and Brother Nicholas must have
spent his quarter of an hour in most unprofitable meditation.

Another addition to the buildings was a wide, covered verandah, which
had been built on in front of the central block, and which therefore
extended the length of the Refectory, the Library, the Chapter Room, and
the Abbot's Parlour. The last was now the Prior's Parlour, because
lodgings for Father Burrowes were being built in the Gatehouse, the only
building of stone that was being erected.

This Gatehouse was to be finished as an Easter offering to the Father
Superior from devout ladies, who had been dismayed at the imagination of
his discomfort. The verandah was granted the title of the Cloister, and
the hours of recreation were now spent here instead of in the Library as
formerly, which enabled studious brethren to read in peace.

The Prior made a rule that every Sunday afternoon all the brethren
should assemble in the Cloister at tea, and spend the hour until Vespers
in jovial intercourse. He did not actually specify that the intercourse
was to be jovial, but he look care by judicious teazing to see that it
was jovial. In his anxiety to bring his farm into cultivation, Brother
George was apt to make any monastic duty give way to manual labour on
those thistle-grown fields, and it was seldom that there were more than
a couple of brethren to say the Office between Lauds and Vespers. The
others had to be content with crossing themselves when they heard the
bell for Terce or None, and even Sext was sparingly attended after the
Prior instituted the eating of the mid-day meal in the fields on fine
days. Hence the conversation in the Cloister on Sunday afternoons was
chiefly agricultural.

"Are you going to help me drill the ten-acre field tomorrow, Brother
Giles?" the Prior aske