“_Ecce minaciter, imminet Arbiter_” (organ and voices were leashed together in terror and warning, breaking away liquidly to the “_ille supremus_”). Then the tone-colours shifted for the prelude to--“_Imminet, imminet, ut mala terminet_----” “Stop! Again!” cried the Cantor; and gave his reasons a little more roundly than was natural at choir-practice. “Ah! Pity o’ man’s vanity! He’s guessed we are here. Come away!” said the Abbot. Anne of Norton, in her carried chair, had been listening too, further along the dark Triforium, with Roger of Salerno. John heard her sob. On the way back, he asked Thomas how her health stood. Before Thomas could reply the sharp-featured Italian doctor pushed between them. “Following on our talk together, I judged it best to tell her,” said he to Thomas. “What?” John asked simply enough. “What she knew already.” Roger of Salerno launched into a Greek quotation to the effect that every woman knows all about everything. “I have no Greek,” said John stiffly. Roger of Salerno had been giving them a good deal of it, at dinner. “Then I’ll come to you in Latin. Ovid hath it neatly. ‘_Utque malum late solet immedicabile cancer_----’ but doubtless you know the rest, worthy Sir.” “Alas! My school-Latin’s but what I’ve gathered by the way from fools professing to heal sick women. ‘_Hocus-pocus_----’ but doubtless you know the rest, worthy Sir.” Roger of Salerno was quite quiet till they regained the dining-room, where the fire had been comforted and the dates, raisins, ginger, figs, and cinnamon-scented sweetmeats set out, with the choicer wines, on the after-table. The Abbot seated himself, drew off his ring, dropped it, that all might hear the tinkle, into an empty silver cup, stretched his feet towards the hearth, and looked at the great gilt and carved rose in the barrel-roof. The silence that keeps from Compline to Matins had closed on their world. The bull-necked Friar watched a ray of sunlight split itself into colours on the rim of a crystal salt-cellar; Roger of Salerno had re-opened some discussion with Brother Thomas on a type of spotted fever that was baffling them both in England and abroad; John took note of the keen profile, and--it might serve as a note for the Great Luke--his hand moved to his bosom. The Abbot saw, and nodded permission. John whipped out silver-point and sketch-book. “Nay--modesty is good enough--but deliver your own opinion,” the Italian was urging the Infirmarian. Out of courtesy to the foreigner nearly all the talk was in table-Latin; more formal and more copious than monk’s patter. Thomas began with his meek stammer. “I confess myself at a loss for the cause of the fever unless--as Varro saith in his _De Re Rustica_--certain small animals which the eye cannot follow enter the body by the nose and mouth, and set up grave diseases. On the other hand, this is not in Scripture.”