within range of his powerful voice should hear of it without delay.Brother Denis the hospitaler made haste to placate him, and movehim to a dry bed elsewhere, but within the hour it became clearthat while the first drenching soon slackened, a steady dripcontinued, and was soon joined by half a dozen more, spanning acircle some yards across. The great weight of snow on the southernroof of the guest hall had somehow worked a passage through thelead and filtered in between the slates, perhaps even caved in anumber of them. Pockets of the driven snow had felt the comparativewarmth within, and with the mute malice of inanimate things hadchosen to baptize the bishop’s emissary. And the leak wasrapidly getting worse.

There was urgent conference at chapter that morning over whatshould and could be done. Perilous and unpleasant work on roofs wascertainly to be avoided if possible during such weather, but on theother hand, if repairs were delayed until the thaw came, they werein for a flood, and the damage, limited at this point, might begreatly aggravated.

There were several among the brothers who had worked on thebuilding of additions to the enclave, barns and stabling andstorehouses, and Brother Conradin, who was still in his fifties androbust as a bull, had been one of the first child oblates, andworked as a boy under the monks of Seez, brought over by thefounding earl to supervise the building of his abbey. Where thefabric was concerned, Brother Conradin’s advice carried thegreatest weight, and having viewed the extent of the leak in theguest hall, he stated firmly that they could not afford to wait, orthey might have to replace half the southern slope of the roof.They had timber, they had slates, they had lead. That southernslope overhung the drainage channel drawn off from the mill leat,frozen hard at present, but there would be no great difficulty inraising a scaffolding. True, it would be bitterly cold work upthere, shifting the mountain of snow first, to ease away thedeforming weight, and then replacing broken or displaced slates andrepairing the lead flashings. But if they worked in short spells,and were allowed a fire in the warming room all day as long as thework lasted, the job could be done.