In a moment the bishop was staggering back, and would have fallen unless he had had the timber wall of the church to sustain him. In a moment, maddened beyond endurance by the outrage, by the words, by the demeanor of the prelate, in forgetfulness of the sacred office of the man who insulted him, in forgetfulness of his own sacred office, forgetful of everything save the slur cast on the one dearest to him in the whole world, the one to whom he looked with a reverence which from her extended to all womanhood, the incandescent Welsh blood in his veins burst into sudden flame, and he struck Bernard in the face, on the mouth that had slandered her and insulted him. And the bishop reeled back and stood speechless, with blear eyes fixed, his hands extended against the split logs, and from his lips, cut with his teeth, blood was flowing. Then, in the dead silence that ensued, an old hermit, clothed in sackcloth, bareheaded, with long matted white hair, walking bent by the aid of a staff--a man who for thirty years had occupied a cell on the mountain-side without leaving it--stood forward before all, an unwonted apparition; and slowly, painfully raising his distorted form, he lifted hand and staff to heaven, and cried: "Wo, wo, wo to the Blessed Valley! The peace of David, our father, is broken. Blood has flowed in strife. That cometh which he foresaw, and over which he wept. Wo! wo! wo!" CHAPTER VI THE SCROLL The young, the thoughtless, were full of exultation over the rebuff that the Normans, with their bishop, had encountered, but the older and wiser men were grave and concerned. The Normans had indeed withdrawn in sullen resentment, outnumbered, and incapable of revenging on the spot and at once the disabled arm of their leader and the broken tooth of their prelate. The old men knew very well that matters would not rest thus; and they feared lest the events of that day when the party of foreigners penetrated to the Blessed Valley might prove the most fruitful in disastrous consequences it had ever seen.