t me for that." He seemed
quite a jolly, pleasant man, I could not understand his nursing
furious revenge; but his face darkened strangely whenever he happened
to mention her name.

As we were starting he came and stood outside the gate, and putting
his lantern down that the light of it might not confuse his sight,
looked earnestly into the night, then said: "The wind has fallen, the
snow flakes get thinner and smaller every moment, in an hour it will
be freezing hard, and will be quite clear; everything depends'upon the
surprise being complete; stop a few minutes yet, my son." He went away
chuckling, and returned presently with two more sturdy monks carrying
something: they threw their burdens down before my feet, they
consisted of all the white albs in the abbey: "There, trust an old
man, who has seen more than one stricken fight in his carnal days; let
the men who scale the walls put these over their arms, and they will
not be seen in the least. God make your sword sharp, my son."

So we departed, and when I met Amald again, he said that what the
prior had done was well thought of; so we agreed that I should take
thirty men, an old squire of our house, well skilled in war, along
with them, scale the walls as quietly as possible, and open the gates
to the rest.

I set off accordingly, after that with low laughing we had put the
albs all over us, wrapping the ladders also in white. Then we crept
very warily and slowly up to the wall; the moat was frozen over, and
on the ice the snow lay quite thick; we all thought that the guards
must be careless enough, when they did not even take the trouble to
break the ice in the moat So we listened- there was no sound at all,
the Christmas midnight mass had long ago been over, it was nearly
three o'clock, and the moon began to clear, there was scarce any snow
falling now, only a flake or two from some low hurrying cloud or
other: the wind sighed gently about the round towers there, but it was
bitter cold, for it had begun to freeze again; we listened for some
minutes, about a quarter of an hour I think, then at a sign from me,
they raised the ladders carefully, muffled as they were at the top
with swathings of wool. I mounted first, old Squire Hugh followed
last; noiselessly we ascended, and soon stood altogether on the walls;
then we carefully lowered the ladders again with long ropes; we got
our swords and axes from out of the folds of our priests' raiments,
and set forward,