"Very willingly will I hear you further, ah, gentle lording," the Cornish knight answered, and again he bent his knee where he stood in the street. "Then," the Young Lovell said, "it is because I can do such deeds as that you have seen that all the men of the North parts will willingly follow me upon any journey. So it would be well if the Percy let me be. For—an he will not I will come to Alnwick and to Warkworth with twice four thousand men for this Percy is little beloved. And so, with scaling hooks and hurdles and faggots and the rest I will smoke him out of Northumberland and hang him upon the first tree in this County Palatine. And that you may tell your King." "Ah, gentle lording," Sir Bertram said, "I tell you that judgment is already reversed." "Of that I know nothing," the Young Lovell said. "But so it is as I have told you. If your King will dwell at peace with us of the North parts he may for me, and I ask nothing better. And so much more I will say, that he has good servants; for no man ever went nearer his death than you when you spoke to me now. And I think you know it well, yet you gave no ground and spoke on. I do not like your kind, for I have seen some of them about the courts of princes, here and elsewhere and you are the caterpillars upon the silken tree of chivalry that shall yet destroy it. Yet that was as brave a feat as ever I saw, and your King is happy if he have more such as you." VIII In the meanwhile that monk Francis sat writing in the Bishop’s room and the Bishop walked up and down behind his back. Once or twice the Bishop paused in his walking as if he wished to speak to the monk, but again he walked on and the monk Francis continued to write rapidly, pausing now and then and looking upwards as he sought to remember the words of the decree beginning: "Jejunandi," or the Decretal: "Nullam res est...." So at last the Bishop stood for a long time near the door, looking down at the nails of his fingers, and then suddenly: "Touching the matter of sorcery, my brother in God...." he said. The monk swung quickly round upon his stool: "There was no sorcery," he said determinedly. "Those three of Castle Lovell were perjured." "So I gathered," the Bishop said softly; "I considered that; it appeared so from what was said to me by the lawyer, Magister Stone." The monk looked with the greater respect at the Bishop. "Father in God," he said, "will you tell me how you came upon that thought?" The Bishop smiled a little faint smile of pleased vanity. For he liked to be considered that he was a subtle reader of the hearts of men. In that he thought that he was the superior of this monk. "When a man comes to me," he said, "with two tales, to each of which he will swear to find many witnesses, I am apt to think that one is false. So it was with this our friend called Stone." "May I hear more?" the monk asked.