“Father Herluin, welcome to my home! I rejoice to see youwell, and to know that Ramsey is restored to the Order. Will younot come within, and let us know in what particular we of Longnercan serve you?”

“You cannot but understand,” said Herluin,addressing himself warily to possible battle ahead, “in whatstate we have regained our abbey. For a year it has been the den ofa rogue army, pillaged and stripped of everything burnable, eventhe walls defiled, where they did not shatter them before theydeparted. We have need of every son of the house, and every friendto the Order, to make good before God what has been desecrated. Itis to you I come, and with you I wish to speak.”

“A friend to the Order,” said Sulien, “I hopeI am. A son of Ramsey and a brother of its brothers I no longer am.Abbot Walter sent me back here, very fairly, to consider myvocation, which he knew to be dubious, and committed my probationto Abbot Radulfus, who has absolved me. But come within, and we canconfer as friends. I will listen reverently, Father, and respectall you may have to say.”

And so he would, for he was a young man brought up to observeall the duties of youth towards his elders; all the more as ayounger son with no inheritance and his own way to make, andtherefore all the greater need to please those who had power andauthority, and could advance his career. He would listen and defer,but he would not be shifted. Nor did he need any friendly witnessto support his side of the case, and why should Herluin’sside of it be weighted even by a devout and silent young acolyte,imposing on an ex-brother by his very presence a duty he no longerowed, and had undertaken mistakenly and for the wrong reasons inthe first place?