Her sins and death, and after that the Judgment. Death and Judgment and for her Hell, or at the best the direst corner of dire Purgatory and the longest stay. Ages there, while souls of thieves and murderers left her one by one and went upward, and never a word for the one who must stay. At the best, the very best, and perhaps even that gleam had no reality! Not Purgatory, but everlasting Hell. CHAPTER XX Richard Englefield, in Westforest cell, might lie without movement, head buried in arms, but that was when he must sleep in order to gain and keep strength, or when Prior or Brother Anselm visited him, it being posture good as another for a monk now in sooth going melancholy mad. Once Brother Anselm, who had been taken from strollers playing in barns and inns, said to the Prior, “He playeth!” Whereupon the Prior strictly watched, but at last said, “Not so. Truth!” And then, like such chess masters, because he had bent what he thought all his mind to it and was assured, he obstinated in his opinion of the board and every piece upon it. “No, it is truth! I have seen it before. Melancholy that forgets how to speak and then after a time mere childishness that will not stint from speaking, though it be only of green fields and cowslip balls! Then silence again like an old sick hound and at last he dies!” Brother Anselm’s doubt had been but momentary. He agreed now with Prior. Also he said, “One helpeth forth the sick hound.” The Prior of Westforest took his lean chin from his lean hand. “I have heard that the Greeks writ over their temples, ‘Nothing too much.’ Where the good of all is in question let the soul take necessary burdens, but not unnecessary ones! This were unnecessary.” Richard Englefield was not going melancholy mad, though he played that he was. He worked. He worked while he lay still upon the cold floor, face hidden by stretched arms, or when he sat moveless, staring into naught with empty, woe-begone face. “Think me melancholy mad, do! So the sooner will you leave me the cell!” They went. For hours he had the dim place to himself, and at night he had it. Monk of Silver Cross was gone, whirled away to the dark country behind Chaos and there dead and buried peacefully. Here was Richard Englefield the master goldsmith. And yet not that either. Here was one who had risen behind goldsmith and monk, who had come up like a tree that was not suspected. He worked, Richard the smith. He gained, no man knew how, two bits of iron. The cell was grated. He filed through a bar and then another, and in the night-time broke the whole away. Fortune or wonder or the miraculous or some natural air into which he had broken was with him. It might have been the last, his will was so awakened, so in action. His fury towered, but it was still fury, very deep and dangerous, bitter passion of a man with mind and will. He saw Success and drew her to him as giants draw. In the dead night he got away.