ht a
dozen to one. Listen, the row is on in the Quatre Voies again. We
shall find more there."

The two were left alone.

Martin raised his wounded companion, whose head was bleeding
profusely.

"Art thou hurt much?"

"Not so very much, only dazed. I shall soon be better. I am close
home."

"Let me support you. Lean on me, I will see you safe."

"You came just in time. Where did you come from? I never saw you
before--and where did you learn to handle the cudgel so well?"

"From the woods of merry Sussex, and later on, the tilt yard of
Kenilworth."

"Oh, you are a true Southerner, then. So am I, the second son of
Waleran de Monceux of Herst, in the Andredsweald.

"Here we are at home--come in to Saint Dymas' Hall."

Chapter 8: Hubert At Lewes Priory.

William de Warrenne and Gundrada his wife, the daughter of the
mighty Conqueror, were travelling on the Continent and made a
pilgrimage to the famous Abbey of Clairvaux, presided over by the
great abbot, poet, and preacher of the age, Saint Bernard. So much
did they admire all they saw and heard, so sweet was the contrast
of monastic peace to their life of ceaseless turmoil, that they
determined to found such a house of God on their newly-acquired
domains in Sussex, after the fashion of Clairvaux.

Already they had superseded the wooden Saxon church of Saint
Pancras, the boy martyr of ancient Rome, which they found at Lewes,
by a stone building, and now upon its site they began to erect a
mightier edifice by far, upon proportions which would entail the
labour of generations.

A wondrous and beautiful priory arose; it covered forty acres, its
church was as big as a cathedral, a magnificent cruciform pile--one
hundred and fifty feet long, sixty-five feet in height from
pavement to roof; there were twenty-four massive pillars in the
nave {14}, each thirty feet in circumference; but it was not
until the time of their grandson, the third earl, that it was
dedicated. Nor indeed were its comely proportions enhanced by the
two western towers until the very date of our tale, nearly two
centuries later. Then it lived on in its beauty, a joy to
successive generations, until the vandals of Thomas Cromwell,
trained to devastation, so completely destroyed it in a few brief
weeks that the next generation had almost forgotten its site
{15}.

The first monks were foreigners, by the advice of Lanfranc, and, as
a great favour, Saint Bernard sent three of his own br