g out at the
door with a bundle of books under his arm, and he had passed in through
the gate over which Prior Houghton's arm had been hung on the previous
evening. It was expected that some more arrests would be made
immediately.

"As for my Lord of Rochester," said the monk, who seemed to revel in the
business of bearing bad news, "and Master More, I make no doubt they
will be cast. They are utterly fixed in their opinions. I hear that my
lord is very sick, and I pray that God may take him to Himself. He is
made Cardinal in Rome, I hear; but his Grace has sworn that he shall
have no head to wear the hat upon."

Then he went off into talk upon the bishop, describing his sufferings in
the Tower, for he was over eighty years old, and had scarcely sufficient
clothes to cover him.

Now and again Chris looked across at his Superior. The Prior sat there
in his great chair, his head on his hand, silent and absorbed; it was
only when Dom Odo stopped for a moment that he glanced up impatiently
and nodded for him to go on. It seemed as if he could not hear enough,
and yet Chris saw him wince, and heard him breathe sharply as each new
detail came out.

The monk told them, too, of Prior Houghton's speech upon the cart.

"They asked him whether even then he would submit to the King's laws,
and he called God to witness that it was not for obstinacy or perversity
that he refused, but that the King and the Parliament had decreed
otherwise than our Holy Mother enjoins; and that for himself he would
sooner suffer every kind of pain than deny a doctrine of the Church. And
when he had prayed from the thirtieth Psalm, he was turned off."

The Prior stared almost vacantly at the monk who told his story with a
kind of terrified gusto, and once or twice his lips moved to speak; but
he was silent, and dropped his chin upon his hand again when the other
had done.

* * * * *

Chris scarcely knew how the days passed away that followed his arrival
in London. He spent them for the most part within doors, writing for the
Prior in the mornings, or keeping watch over the door as his Superior
talked with prelates and churchmen within, for ecclesiastical London was
as busy as a broken ant-hill, and men came and went continually--scared,
furtive monks, who looked this way and that, an abbot or two up for the
House of Lords, priors and procurators on business. There were continual
communications going to and fro am