Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/26

4 the example should be a public one.' The Abbot spoke in Latin now, as a language which was more fitted by its age and solemnity to convey the thoughts of two high dignitaries of the order.

'It would perchance be best that the novices be not admitted,' suggested the master. 'This mention of a woman may turn their minds from their pious meditations to worldly and evil thoughts.'

'Woman! woman!' groaned the Abbot. 'Well has the holy Chrysostom termed them radix malorum. From Eve downwards, what good hath come from any of them? Who brings the plaint?'

'It is brother Ambrose.'

'A holy and devout young man.'

'A light and a pattern to every novice.'

'Let the matter be brought to an issue, then, according to our old-time monastic habit. Bid the chancellor and the sub-chancellor lead in the brothers according to age, together with brother John the accused and brother Ambrose the accuser.'

'And the novices?'

'Let them bide in the north alley of the cloisters. Stay! Bid the sub-chancellor send out to them Thomas the lector to read unto them from the "Gesta beati Benedicti." It may save them from foolish and pernicious babbling.'

The Abbot was left to himself once more, and bent his thin grey face over his illuminated breviary. So he remained while the senior monks filed slowly and sedately into the chamber, seating themselves upon the long oaken benches which lined the wall on either side. At the further end, in two high chairs as large as that of the Abbot, though hardly as elaborately carved, sat the master of the novices and the chancellor, the latter a broad and portly priest, with dark mirthful eyes and a thick outgrowth of crisp black hair all round his tonsured head. Between them stood a lean white-faced brother who appeared to be ill at ease, shifting his feet from side to side and tapping his chin nervously with the long