Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/446

RV 378 (Rh) 'There hath not been such a lord abbot,' said Father Nicolas, 'to my knowledge, since the days of Abbot Ingelram, who '

At that portentous word, which always preluded a long story, the abbot broke in.

'May God have mercy on his soul! we talk not of him now. What I would know of ye, my brethren, is, whether I have, in your mind, faithfully discharged the duties of mine office?'

'There has never been subject of complaint,' answered the sub-prior.

The sacristan, more diffuse, enumerated the various acts of indulgence and kindness which the mild government of Abbot Boniface had conferred on the brotherhood of Saint Mary's—the indulgentiae, the gratias, the biberes, the weekly mess of boiled almonds, the enlarged accommodation of the refectory, the better arrangement of the cellarage, the improvement of the revenue of the monastery, the diminution of the privations of the brethren.

'You might have added, my brother,' said the abbot, listening with melancholy acquiescence to the detail of his own merits, 'that I caused to be built that curious screen, which secureth the cloisters from the north-east wind. But all these things avail nothing. As we read in holy Maccabee, Capta est civitas per voluntatem Dei. It hath cost me no little thought, no common toil, to keep these weighty matters in such order as you have seen them; there was both barn and bin to be kept full; infirmary, dormitory, guest-hall, and refectory, to be looked to; processions to be made, confessions to be heard, strangers to be entertained, veniae to be granted or refused; and I warrant me, when every one of you was asleep in your cell, the abbot hath lain awake for a full hour by the bell, thinking how these matters might be ordered seemly and suitably.'

'May we ask, reverend my lord,' said the sub-prior, 'what additional care has now been thrown upon you, since your discourse seems to point that way?'

'Marry, this it is,' said the abbot. 'The talk is not now of biberes,$n$ or of caritas, or of boiled almonds, but of an English band coming against us from Hexham, commanded by Sir John Foster; nor is it of the screening us from the