Silvius’s eyes were netted round with cynical wrinkles. “Assuredly your saint is both dead and alive,” he said. “Some of you gentlemen have slain the saint in her. I will not ask you, my son, whether the guilt of the sacrilege is yours.” His sly, sneering face made Aymery’s manhood grow hot in him. He was in no temper for sardonic subtleties. Silvius saw a look in his eyes that betrayed a lust to take someone by the throat. And Silvius kept the fire between him and the man of the sword, nodding to the two servants, and hinting without deceit that they should be ready with their staves. “My son,” he said, licking his lips; “we are burning the unclean relics of an unclean woman. If you ask me for reasons, I send you to my lord, Reginald, at the Abbey. His word is law here. I am but a humble servant in God’s house.” Aymery looked Silvius in the eyes, and then turned on his heel, with a face like ice. He mounted his horse, and went up Mountjoye Hill at a canter, choosing to gallop at the core of the truth rather than suffer Dom Silvius to lick his lips and sneer. Nor had horse and rider disappeared below the sky line before Silvius called the two servants to him, gave them their orders, and sent them away into the town. He himself tarried there awhile, warming his hands at the fire that consumed those relics of an unsaintly saint. When Aymery came out from the presence of Reginald of Brecon that day his face had the frozen bleakness of a winter land. He walked stiffly, almost rigidly, with nostrils that twitched, and hungered for air. The Abbey servants fell back before him as he mounted his horse at the gate. Here was a man who was not to be meddled with. His face sobered them more than the face of a leper. Aymery struck his horse with the spurs, and the beast leapt his own length, stood quivering a moment, and then went away at a sharp gallop as though he had the devil on his back. Aymery’s eyes looked straight before him, eyes that caught the white glare of an inward fury, and were blind to the outer world. The snow lay white upon the roofs of the little town. Smoke ascended tranquilly into a shimmer of sunlight. Aymery was not to ride out of Battle town at his own pace; Dom Silvius had seen to that. At the sound of a horn a crowd of figures seemed to start from nowhere; men, women, and children came running together; the whole wasps’ nest was on the wing. Aymery drew up sharply, for the crowd in front of him filled the street. He did not grasp the meaning of it at first, but stared round at the people as though he were but a chance actor in some chance scene. A stone thrown from the crowd carried a rude hint, striking him upon the shield that hung at his back. And with the throwing of the first stone the whole mob sent up a sudden roar of anger. “Out, out, seducer!” “Pelt the sacrilegious dog!” “Here is Dame Denise’s man, neighbours.” “Drag him off.” “Roll him in the mud.”