ling after them.
Some of his friends thought that he had asked De Morville to come back
and speak quietly with him, but it was not so. He returned to his
seat, still excited and complaining.

"My lord," said John of Salisbury to him, "it is strange that you will
never be advised. What occasion was there for you to go after these
men and exasperate them with your bitter speeches? You would have
done better, surely, by being quiet and giving them a milder answer.
They mean no good, and you only commit yourself."

The archbishop sighed, and said, "I have done with advice. I know what
I have before me."

It was four o'clock when the knights entered. It was now nearly five;
and unless there were lights the room must have been almost dark.
Beyond the archbishop's chamber was an ante-room, beyond the ante-room
the hall. The knights, passing through the hall into the quadrangle,
and thence to the lodge, called their men to arms. The great gate was
closed. A mounted guard was stationed outside, with orders to allow no
one to go out or in. The knights threw off their cloaks and buckled on
their swords. This was the work of a few minutes. From the cathedral
tower the vesper bell was beginning to sound. The archbishop had
seated himself to recover from the agitation of the preceding scene,
when a breathless monk rushed in to say that the knights were arming.
"Who cares? Let them arm," was all that the archbishop said. His
clergy was less indifferent. If the archbishop was ready for death,
they were not. The door from the hall into the court was closed and
barred, and a short respite was thus secured. The intention of the
knights, it may be presumed, was to seize the archbishop and carry him
off to Saltwood or to De Morville's castle at Knaresborough, or
perhaps to Normandy. Coming back to execute their purpose, they found
themselves stopped by the hall door. To burst it open would require
time; the ante-room between the hall and the archbishop's apartments
opened by an oriel window and an outside stair into a garden. Robert
de Broc, who knew the house well, led the way to it in the dark. The
steps were broken, but a ladder was standing against the window, by
which the knights mounted, and the crash of the falling casement told
the fluttered group about the archbishop that their enemies were upon
them. There was still a moment. The party who entered by the window,
instead of turning into the archbishop's room, first went into the