“Me?” said Richard, round-eyed, looking up from hisenjoyment of the stolen apple. No one had any great cause to beafraid of Brother Paul, the master of the novices and the children,who was the gentlest and most patient of men, but even a reprooffrom him was to be evaded if possible. “What does he want mefor?”

“You should best know that,” said the novice, withmildly malicious intent. “It was not likely he’d tellme. Go and find out for yourself, if you truly have nonotion.”

Richard committed his denuded core to the pond, and rose slowlyfrom the grass. “In the parlour, you say?” The use ofso private and ceremonial a place argued something grave, andthough he was unaware of any but the most venial of misdeeds thatcould be laid to his account during the past weeks, it behoved himto be wary. He went off slowly and thoughtfully, trailing his barefeet in the coolness of the grass, deliberately scuffing hardlittle soles along the cobbles of the court, and duly presentedhimself. In the small, dim parlour, where visitors from the outsideworld might occasionally talk in private with their cloisteredsons.

Brother Paul was standing with his back to the single window,rendering the small room even dimmer than it need have been. Thestraight, close-shorn ring of hair round his polished crown wasstill black and thick at fifty, and he habitually stood, as indeedhe also sat, stooped a little forward, from so many years ofdealing with creatures half his size, and desiring to reassure themrather than awe them with his stature and bearing. A kindly,scholarly, indulgent man, but a good teacher for all that, and onewho could keep his chicks in order without having to keep them interror. The oldest remaining oblatus, given to God when hewas five years old, and now approaching fifteen and his novitiate,told awful stories of Brother Paul’s predecessor, who hadruled with the rod, and been possessed of an eye that could freezethe blood.