ut the Knight had not risen to either.

After a while Hugh had lifted his head, and leaned back in his chair;
fixing his eyes, in his turn, upon the banner hanging from the rafters.

It had ceased to wave gently to and fro. Probably Father Benedict had
closed the trap-door, concealed behind an upright beam, through which
he was wont to peer down into the banqueting hall below, in order to
satisfy himself that all was well and that the Reverend Father needed
naught.

Let it be here recorded that this exceeding vigilance, on the part of
Father Benedict, met with but scant reward. For, having deduced a
draught, and its reason, from the slight stirring of the banner during
his conversation with the Knight, the Bishop gave certain secret
instructions to Brother Philip, with the result that the next time the
Chaplain peered down upon a private conference he found, at its close,
the door by which he had gained access to the roof chamber barred on
the outside, and, forcing it, he was in no better case, the ladder
which connected it with another disused chamber below having been
removed. Thereafter Father Benedict watched the Bishop, and his guest,
partake of three meals, before he could bring himself to make known his
predicament, and beg to be released. And, even then, the Bishop was
amazingly slow in locating the place from which issued the agitated
voice imploring assistance. Several brethren were summoned to help; so
that quite a little crowd stood gazing up at the pallid countenance of
Father Benedict, framed in the trap-door as, lying upon his very empty
stomach, he called down replies to the Bishop's questions; vainly
striving to give a plausible reason for the peculiar situation in which
he was discovered.

But, to return to the interview which brought about this later
development.

The Knight had lifted his head, yet had still remained silent and
impassive.

Where at length the Bishop had paused, awaiting comment of some kind,
Hugh d'Argent, removing his eyes from the rafters, had asked:

"When, my lord, do you propose to meet the Prioress, should my wife,
upon learning the truth, elect to return to the Nunnery?"

Thus had the Bishop been forced to realise that the flow of his
eloquence, the ripple of his humour, the strong current of his
arguments, the gentle lapping of his tenderness, the breakers of his
threats, and the thunderous billows of his denunciations, had alike
expended themselves against the