“Stop the shaveling’s tongue, but shed no blood here,” cried Ivo; “seize him, seize them all, and bring them into the refectory!”—and so saying the chief rushed out of the chapel into the hall. It was an unequal match—thirty-nine men-at-arms against a few monks and boys and waiting men; yet before the superior could be dragged from the high altar, and conveyed with all his community into the hall, several of the Normans were made to measure their length on the chapel floor (they could not wrestle like our true Saxons), and some of them were so squeezed within their mail sleeves and gorgets[40] by the grip of Saxon hands, that they bore away the marks and smarts that lasted them many a day. It was for this that one of them cut the weazen[41] of the sturdy old cook as soon as he got him outside the chapel door, and that another of them cut off the ears of the equally stout cellarer. At last they were all conveyed, bound with their cords or girdles, into the hall. The Taille-Bois, with his naked sword in his hand, and with a man-at-arms on either side of him, sat at the top of the hall in the superior’s chair of state; and the superior and the rest of the brotherhood were brought before him like criminals. “Brother to the devil,” said Ivo, “what was meant by thy collecting of armed men—rebel and traitor serfs that shall rue the deed!—thy sounding of horns on the house-top; thy fighting monks that have killed one of my best men-at-arms; thy long delay in opening thy doors to those who knocked at them in the name of King William; thy outrages in the chapel, and all thy other iniquities which I have so oft-times pardoned at the prayer of the Lady Lucia? Speak, friar, and tell me why I should not hang thee over thine own gateway as a terror and an example to all the other Saxon monks in this country, who are all in their hearts enemies and traitors to the good king that God and victory have put over this land!” Had it not been that Father Adhelm was out of breath, from his wrestling in the Chapel, I wist he never would have allowed Ivo Taille-Bois to speak so long without interruption. But by the time the Norman paused, the superior had partly recovered his breath; and he did not keep the Norman waiting for his answer.