istopher, who lay at his feet. "Take him up, that
inquest may be held on him, who died doing murder. Can none enter the
house? His pocket full of gold to him who saves the Lady Cicely!"

"Can any enter hell and live?" answered the same voice out of the
smoke and gloom. "Seek her sweet soul in heaven, if you may come there,
Abbot."

Then, with scared faces, they lifted up Christopher and the other dead
and wounded and carried them away, leaving Cranwell Towers to burn
itself to ashes, for so fierce was the heat that none could bide there
longer.

Two hours had gone by. The Abbot sat in the little room of a cottage
at Cranwell that he had occupied during the siege of the Towers. It was
near midnight, yet, weary as he was, he could not rest; indeed, had the
night been less foul and dark he would have spent the time in riding
back to Blossholme. His heart was ill at ease. Things had gone well with
him, it is true. Sir John Foterell was dead--slain by "outlawed
men;" Sir Christopher Harflete was dead--did not his body lie in the
neat-house yonder? Cicely, daughter of the one and wife to the other,
was dead also, burned in the fire at the Towers, so that doubtless the
precious gems and the wide lands he coveted would fall into his lap
without further trouble. For, Cromwell being bribed, who would try to
snatch them from the powerful Abbot of Blossholme, and had he not a
title to them--of a sort?

And yet he was very ill at ease, for, as that voice had said--whose
voice was it? he wondered, somehow it seemed familiar--the blood of
these people lay on his head; and there came into his mind the text of
Holy Writ which he had quoted to Christopher, that he who shed man's
blood by man should his blood be shed. Also, although he had paid the
Vicar-General to back him, monks were in no great favour at the English
Court, and if this story travelled there, as it might, for even the
strengthless dead find friends, it was possible that questions would be
asked, questions hard to answer. Before Heaven he could justify himself
for all that he had done, but before King Henry, who would usurp the
powers of the very Pope, if the truth should chance to reach the royal
ear--ah! that was another matter.

The room was cold after the heat of that great fire; his Southern blood,
which had been warm enough, grew chill; loneliness and depression took
hold of him; he began to wonder how far in the eyes of God above the end
justifies the mea