"You have lost your oars, fools," he said. "Or, perhaps, you brought none. Should'st have remembered the lake. Take a stern rope and we'll tow ye home like knights. Now then, brethren, ye have heard the news, God in His mercy hath sent power to these poor men and aided their arm, so that they have slain the burner of His priests and ravisher of poor maids. God has answered our prayers. Sing we to Him then a song of thanksgiving. Sing up every man-jack of you, for God has wonderfully dealt with these poor men." And then with a sudden crash of sound they began to sing the greatest of all hymns, the _Te Deum_. "_Te Deum Laudamus: te Dominum confitemur_," pulsed and rang through the night in glad appeal. So fervent and joyous was the song, the monks sang it so merrily, and withal it was to such a good and jocund tune, that Hyla was overcome entirely. He knelt in the swiftly-moving punt sobbing like a little child. Once he raised his face to heaven, and behold, there was a bright white moon silvering all the sky! Very soon they came to the opposite shore of the lake, indeed, before the final "_In te Domine_." The shore sloped gradually down to the lake's edge in a smooth sweep of grass sward which met the water without any break. A few yards up the slope high trees fringed a road which led to the Abbey on the hill-top. Icomb was, in fact, a low island about half a mile square. Its highest point was hardly out of the fen mists. Round about in the county, the place was always spoken of as an Abbey, though it was, as a matter of fact, no more than a Priory, and of no great importance at that. Icomb was a new offshoot from Saint Bernard's famous Abbey of Clairvaux. Very little was as yet known of the Cistercians, and the monks of Icomb were regarded as mysterious and not altogether desirable people by the great religious houses at Ely and Medhampstede. It was part of the Cistercian rule that the founders of an abbey should choose some lonely, dismal place for their home. The idea was not entirely that of the eremite, for the Cistercians were improvers as well as colonists. Icomb was the most lonely place in all the Eastern counties that the monks could have chosen for their retreat from the perils and unrests of this world. The low, tree-crowned island hill, surrounded by vast waters, protected by savage swamps, hidden in the very heart of the fen, was ideal for their purpose. In that time not even churches were safe from lawless bandits like Geoffroi de la Bourne or Roger Bigot. Although men like these were belted knights of noble family, and still kept up much of the ceremonial of their position, they were little more than robbers, and instances abound of their sacrilege. But as yet none of them had troubled Icomb. The place was very inaccessible; it was excellently protected by Nature, the defences were very strong, and the garrison a fine one.