"Farewell, then; I can be no friend to a coward." And the speaker departed: Wilfred counted his steps as he went down the stairs. One pang of boyish pride--wounded pride--but it was soon lost in the deeper woe. A few more minutes and the warder brought the lad his supper. He ate it, and then, wearied out--he had had no rest during the previous night as the reader is aware, and had been in the saddle for twenty hours--wearied out, he slept. And while he slept the door softly opened, and the baron entered. At the first glance he saw the lad was fast asleep, as his heavy and regular breathing indicated. He did not awake him, but gazed upon the features of the boy he had so deeply injured, with an expression wherein there was no lingering remorse, but simply a deep and deadly hatred. At length he was about to awake the sleeper, when he saw the end of a packet of parchment protrude from the breast of the tunic. The baron drew it softly out. It was the letter of Father Elphege to the Bishop of Coutances. The baron was scholar enough to read it--few Normans were so, and fewer English nobles; but he was an exception. He read and knew all; he read, and blanched a deadly white as he did so; his knees shook together, and a cold sweat covered his face. It was known, then; to how many? Probably only to the prior and Wilfred, for it was but a dying confession of yesterday, as he gathered from the letter. A sudden resolution came upon him; he did not awake the sleeper, but retired to digest it at his ease in the security of his own chamber. It was but little sleep the baron took that night. Hour after hour the sentinel heard him pacing to and fro. Had any one seen him, he would have judged that Hugo was passing through a terrible mental conflict. "No, I cannot do it," he said, as if to some unseen prompter. "It is the only way; crush all thine enemies at once, let not even a dog survive to bark at thee." "But what would the world say?" "The world need not know, if thou contrivest well." "But such secrets will out--a bird of the air would carry the matter, if none else did." "Such are the bogies with which nurses frighten children. Art thou not a man and a Norman?" "But the poor monks--if they were but soldiers." "The less crime if they perish--they are fitter to die; and they are but English swine, like their neighbours, of whom thou hast slain so many." So, through the long hours did the Prince of Darkness commune with his destined prey. There are periods of temptation which none know in their intensity, save such as have by long habit encouraged the Evil One to tempt them--who have swallowed bait after bait, until they can digest a very large hook at last. At length, just as the dawn was reddening the skies, the baron threw himself upon his pallet and slept, not the sleep of the innocent, for his features moved convulsively again and again, and sometimes it seemed as if he were contending with some fearful adversary in his dreams.