ng up the
Fifth Psalm, _'Verba mea,_

`Give ear unto my words, O Lord,
My meditation weigh,'

march out chanting, and leave the Six to their work in the
Chapter here. Their work, before long, they announce as
finished: they, with their eye on the Sacrosancta, imprecating
the Lord to weigh and witness their meditation, have fixed on
Three Names, and written them in this Sealed Paper. Let Samson
Subsacrista, general servant of the party, take charge of it. On
the morrow morning, our Prior and his Twelve will be ready to get
under way.

This then is the ballot-box and electoral winnowing-machine they
have at St. Edmundsbury: a mind fixed on the Thrice Holy, an
appeal to God on high to witness their meditation: by far the
best, and indeed the only good electoral winnowing-machine,--If
men have souls in them. Totally worthless, it is true, and even
hideous and poisonous, if men have no souls. But without soul,
alas what winnowing-machine in human elections, can be of
avail? We cannot get along without soul; we stick fast, the
mournfullest spectacle; and salt itself will not save us!

On the morrow morning, accordingly, our Thirteen set forth; or
rather our Prior and Eleven; for Samson, as general servant of
the party, has to linger, settling many things. At length he too
gets upon the road; and, 'carrying the sealed Paper in a leather
pouch hung round his neck; and _froccum bajulans in ulnis'_
(thanks to thee Bozzy Jocelin), 'his frock-skirts looped over his
elbow,' skewing substantial stern-works, tramps stoutly along.
Away across the Heath, not yet of Newmarket and horse-jockeying;
across your Fleam-dike and Devil's-dike, no longer useful as a
Mercian East-Anglian boundary or bulwark: continually towards
Waltham, and the Bishop of Winchester's House there, for his
Majesty is in that. Brother Samson, as purse-bearer, has the
reckoning always, when there is one, to pay; 'delays are
numerous,' progress none of the swiftest.

But, in the solitude of the Convent, Destiny thus big and in her
birthtime, what gossiping, what babbling, what dreaming of
dreams! The secret of the Three our electoral elders alone know:
some Abbot we shall have to govern us; but which Abbot, O which!
One Monk discerns in a vision of the night-watches, that we shall
get an Abbot of our own body, without needing to demur: a
prophet appeared to him clad all in white, and said, "Ye shall
have one of yours, and h