he church. Out of respect for the service and the dead, they spoke
in guarded tones; but the echoes of that huge, empty building caught up
their words, and hollowly repeated and repeated them along the aisles.

"A monk!" returned Sir Oliver (for he it was), when he had heard the
report of the archer. "My brother, I looked not for your coming," he
added, turning to young Shelton. "In all civility, who are ye? and at
whose instance do ye join your supplications to ours?"

Dick, keeping his cowl about his face, signed to Sir Oliver to move a
pace or two aside from the archers; and, so soon as the priest had done
so, "I cannot hope to deceive you, sir," he said. "My life is in your
hands."

Sir Oliver violently started; his stout cheeks grew pale, and for a space
he was silent.

"Richard," he said, "what brings you here, I know not; but I much
misdoubt it to be evil. Nevertheless, for the kindness that was, I would
not willingly deliver you to harm. Ye shall sit all night beside me in
the stalls: ye shall sit there till my Lord of Shoreby be married, and
the party gone safe home; and if all goeth well, and ye have planned no
evil, in the end ye shall go whither ye will. But if your purpose be
bloody, it shall return upon your head. Amen!"

And the priest devoutly crossed himself, and turned and louted to the
altar.

With that, he spoke a few words more to the soldiers, and taking Dick by
the hand, led him up to the choir, and placed him in the stall beside his
own, where, for mere decency, the lad had instantly to kneel and appear
to be busy with his devotions.

His mind and his eyes, however, were continually wandering. Three of the
soldiers, he observed, instead of returning to the house, had got them
quietly into a point of vantage in the aisle; and he could not doubt that
they had done so by Sir Oliver's command. Here, then, he was trapped.
Here he must spend the night in the ghostly glimmer and shadow of the
church, and looking on the pale face of him he slew; and here, in the
morning, he must see his sweetheart married to another man before his
eyes.

But, for all that, he obtained a command upon his mind, and built himself
up in patience to await the issue.

CHAPTER IV--IN THE ABBEY CHURCH

In Shoreby Abbey Church the prayers were kept up all night without
cessation, now with the singing of psalms, now with a note or two upon
the bell.

Rutter, the spy, was nobly waked. There he lay, me