“Oh Thurstan,” cried the chamberlain with a voice of great joy, “thou hast done wisely! but it would not be wisely done in us to let thee go forth of this house for this present! Sub-prior, cellarer, friends, all that would save the abbey and your own lives, look to the door! Prior, put it to the vote that the house in chapter assembled do accept the voluntary resignation of Thurstan, and that he, our whilom abbat, be closely confined within his own innermost chamber, until another chapter ordain otherwise, or until this exceeding great danger be past.” The door was more than secured; and save only the feeble voices of those three old and good monks, Fathers Kynric, Elsin, and Celred, not a voice was heard to speak against these wicked proposals, or in favour of the bountiful Lord Abbat, whose heart died within him at the sight of so much ingratitude, and who stood, as if rooted to the ground, at the end of the hall near the door, muttering to himself, “Hereward, my son, if thou hadst lived it ne’er had come to this! Oh noble lords and knights and warriors true in the Camp,—no longer a Camp of Refuge, but _Castra Doloris_, a Camp of Woe,—ye will be betrayed and butchered, and in ye will be betrayed and butchered the liberties of England and the last rights of the English church, before warning can be given ye! Oh Stigand, my spiritual lord, and all ye Saxon bishops and abbats that came hither as to a sanctuary, ye have but thrown yourselves into the lion’s den! Hereward, dear, brave Hereward, thou art happy, thou art happy in this, that thou hast at least died like a soldier! The rest of us will die like sheep in the shambles!”