And thus it was all alone that the dark and thin and sad Salernitan entered the great hall, in the midst of a coughing and spitting, and an uplifting and a turning away of eyes, as if the monks felt sulphur in their gorges, and saw some fearful and supernatural object with their eyes. Nothing abashed, the Salernitan threw off the black mantle which he ordinarily wore, and stepping unto the midst of the hall—the monks being seated all round him—he made the blessed sign of the cross, threw up his hands for a moment as if in prayer, and then spoke. And when he first began to speak, although he more immediately faced the abbat and his friendly honest countenance, his coal-black eyes, which seemed all of a blaze, rested and were fixed upon the envious false visage of the prior, who wriggled in his seat, and whose eyes were bent upon the ground, all unable to encounter the burning glances of that animated, irate Italian. “My good Lord Abbat,” said Girolamo, looking as we have said, not at Thurstan, but at the prior, “what is this horrid thing that I hear? What are these evil rumours which have been raised against me, while I have been adventuring my life for the service of this house and the good Saxon cause?” “There hath been some idle talk about sortilege, and it grieves me to say that this idle talk hath of late become very loud in this house,” responded Thurstan. “And who be they who first raised this talk?” said Girolamo; “where are my accusers? Who are the members of this house that have not seen as well my devotion to Heaven as the earthly and natural and legitimate means by which I have worked out mine ends for the furtherance of the good cause? Where are they, that I may speak to them and tell them to their faces how much they have erred or how greatly they have lied? But they dare not look me in the face!” And as he said these words he turned his burning eyes from the prior to the chamberlain, and then from the chamberlain to another cankerous monk, and to another, and another, and they all pulled their cowls over their brows and looked down upon the floor. But at last the chamberlain found voice and courage enough to raise his head a little; and he said, “Oh, stranger! since thy first coming amongst us thou hast done things most strange—so strange that wise and good men have thought they have seen the finger of the devil in it.”