The burgher folk of Battle and the people on the Abbey lands began to have their grievances against Denise, grumbling with superstitious pettiness because their hopes had profited so little. There was a multitude of small things remembered against her, for of what use was a holy woman if her sanctity brought no blessings. Grubs had attacked the apples; why had not Denise prevented that? The sheep had been worried with the “fly”; again Denise had been besought to pray against the pest. Many of the wells had run dry with the hot summer; what was the use of a saint who could not bring back water? There were many more things quoted against her. Mulgar the carrier had brought a horse cursed with “wind sucking” and the staggers. A holy woman should be able to conjure such trifles, and Mulgar had brought three pennies as an offering. The horse had died on the road next day. Gilbert the miller was plagued with rats. And the rats prospered, even though he had brought a dead buck rat to Denise, and besought her to curse the vermin. Olivia, the goldsmith’s wife, brought a girl with a purple birth-mark on her cheek. She desired Denise to touch the stain that it might disappear. The birth-mark remained for all to see. A woman in child-bed sent for Denise’s blessing. The child was still-born the very same night. Well might Denise feel that the virtue had gone out of her, that the people were beginning to mock, and that her prayers were as so much chaff. The bitterness and the humiliation were not of her own seeking. They had set her upon a pinnacle, crowded about her open-mouthed, ready for the blessings she should bestow. Her white garments, and her burning aureole of hair had dazzled them, and the power of her beauty remained with her still. But the mystery was passing; she had profited none of the people; her prayers had burst like bubbles in the air. And since the human heart is ever a fickle thing, ready to scoff and sneer, and think itself cheated when its own fancies fall to the ground, the very children began to catch the spirit of their elders, and to throw surreptitious stones at Denise’s door. They invented a game, too, that they called the Silly Saint, in which one of the girls wore a halo of straw and attempted to work wonders which were never wonderful, till the audience rose and rolled her in the grass. No one chided them for such indecent blasphemy. Even Dom Silvius was ready to wash his hands of Denise. There were more sinister whisperings in the air as the autumn drew on and merged into the winter. Bridget, the smith’s wife, whose boy had died on Denise’s knees, had set her tongue and her spite against the saint. The woman had been very bitter against Denise all through the summer, laughing maliciously over her failures, and nodding her head with the air of “I could have told you so.” When neighbours had still seemed credulous, she had put her tongue in her cheek, and mocked.