nates in that way. I, as a brisk-eyed noticing youth and novice,
could not help asking of the elders, asking of Magister Samson in
particular: Why he, well-instructed and a knowing man, had not spoken
out, and brought matters to a bearing? Magister Samson was Teacher of
the Novices, appointed to breed us up to the rules, and I loved him
well. "_Fili mi_," answered Samson, "the burnt child shuns the fire.
Dost thou not know, our Lord the Abbot sent me once to Acre in
Norfolk, to solitary confinement and bread-and-water, already? The
Hinghams, Hugo and Robert, have just got home from banishment for
speaking. This is the hour of darkness: the hour when flatterers rule
and are believed. _Videat Dominus_, let the Lord see, and judge."

In very truth, what could poor old Abbot Hugo do? A frail old man, and
the Philistines were upon him,--that is to say, the Hebrews. He had
nothing for it but to shrink away from them; get back into his warm
flannels, into his warm delusions again. Happily, before it was quite
too late, he bethought him of pilgriming to St. Thomas of Canterbury.
He set out, with a fit train, in the autumn days of the year 1180;
near Rochester City, his mule threw him, dislocated his poor kneepan,
raised incurable inflammatory fever; and the poor old man got his
dismissal from the whole coil at once. St. Thomas a Becket, though in
a circuitous way, had _brought_ deliverance! Neither Jew usurers, nor
grumbling monks, nor other importunate despicability of men or
mud-elements afflicted Abbot Hugo any more; but he dropt his rosaries,
closed his account-books, closed his old eyes, and lay down into the
long sleep. Heavy-laden hoary old Dominus Hugo, fare thee well.

One thing we cannot mention without a due thrill of horror: namely,
that, in the empty exchequer of Dominus Hugo, there was not found one
penny to distribute to the Poor that they might pray for his soul! By
a kind of godsend, Fifty shillings did, in the very nick of time, fall
due, or seem to fall due, from one of his Farmers (the _Firmarius_ de
Palegrava), and he paid it, and the Poor had it; though, alas, this
too only _seemed_ to fall due, and we had it to pay again afterwards.
Dominus Hugo's apartments were plundered by his servants, to the last
portable stool, in a few minutes after the breath was out of his body.
Forlorn old Hugo, fare thee well forever.

CHAPTER V.

TWELFTH CENTURY.

Our Abbot being dead, the _Dominus Rex_, Henry II.