Lean and strong, and a master chess player, he came to front of the dais, and lifting voice, entered into explanation of Brother Richard’s sad illness and of the ways of the fiend who for this time had overthrown the saintly man. But he would recover--Prior Matthew had no doubt of it--under Walter the leech’s care, amid his brethren at Silver Cross, or at Westforest, where was smaller range, stricter solitude. He should have tendance; he should have prayers. “As for that Presence that did descend upon him. She the Blessed is not harmed! Men and women of Middle Forest, the Rose still rests in reliquary, the Healing Well still heals! Let them that are sick come prove it!” Edmund the Preacher cried out mightily. “If it be so, still hath the devil compacted with the harlot, Morgen Fay! How else could the thought of her, the form of her, enter here? The devil made her to be seen in monastery cell, thrusting aside True Queen! Seek her out, bind her to the stake by town cross and burn her! Never else will this countryside be cleansed!” Prior Matthew looked with narrowed eyes. “There is truth in what you say, Edmund the Preacher! Long hath she been great scandal!” He thought, “Best that she have her cry quickly and be done with it! All the poison out at once in one dish, not trailing forever, word here and word there! She set sail, long ago, to come to this end. This year or next, what matter?” And he saw that it would make diversion. Let her clamour what she would of what she had done! It would be the fiend speaking. Silver Cross and Matthew of Westforest against a mad monk and a harlot! Silver Cross and Westforest and Montjoy. He saw as in a scroll that Montjoy would never wholly believe nor yet wholly disbelieve. Richard Englefield cried again, “Ride at once, Montjoy! They will have burned ladder and ropes and cloaks and scarfs. But the door behind the rood--they have not had time there--” “What is that? What?” cried the Abbot sharply. “Door behind rood?” “Where was none, door was made between my cell and yonder villain monk’s! So you sent me for penance to Westforest, so it was done. Then a great rood, great and black, was set before it. Yea, you used Christ on the cross for mask! Dim was it in that cell--never had I light in that cell! Now I have light--now it burns! Aside she pushed salvation--in she stepped, mincing like a harlot, having taken sugar for her voice--” Abbot Mark fairly shrieked with horror. “Oh, if we did not know that it is Sathanas himself that speaketh, not the poor man whom he hath laid in bonds! Door--door!” He summoned sub-prior.