John Harbottle did not answer this, for he thought there was little love lost between his lord and that young lording. Within himself he thought that, if the religious should espouse that lording’s cause it would be a good thing for the Percy to be advised to let him be, and this monk had great voice with the lower order of people whom the Earl had cause to fear, since they were sworn to have his blood because of the taxes that, in the King’s name, he laid upon them. But he did not speak upon those matters, saying aloud: "It is strange, though I know it to be true, that my lord shall have honour in heaven by reason that a man be found to be walled up in a space no larger than the kennel of my hound Diccon and so live out his life." "My friend," the monk said, "I may not listen to you further, for that would come near conversing with a heretic. And the penalty for such conversation is that at every Easter and high feast I must stand beside the high altar, in a robe of penitence, having in my hand a rod or peeled wand ten foot in length and other penances, a many I must do." "God forbid!" John Harbottle said, "for I am no heretic and no more than a plain, blunt man. And surely these things are hard to understand." "My son," that monk said, and by the creasing of his tight lips John Harbottle knew that he had been pleasant with him before and had not meant in earnestness to call him a heretic. "Every day you hear of the ways of God that are hard to understand. You have heard to-day or yesterday of the miracle that was wrought on Tuesday in the Abbey of our own town of Alnwick—how that the foot of Sir Simon de Montfort, that there they have and that is incorruptible, cured a certain very wealthy burgess of Newcastle called Arnoldus Pickett. For he was not able to move his foot from his bed or put his hand to his mouth or perform any bodily function. And so, in a dream he was bidden to go to your Abbey of the Premonstratensian Brotherhood and the foot of Simon de Montfort should cure him. Which, when it was known to the canons, there serving God, in order that this merchant might approach more easily—for as yet he heavily laboured in his lameness—and lest he should suffer too much, two of them brought it reverently to him, in its silver shoe. But, before the patient was able to approach for the purpose of kissing it, and by the mere sight of the slipper, on account of the merits of Simon de Montfort, he was restored. And this, to-day, our monks are writing in their chronicle and praising God. And consider what glory there will be in this foot of Simon de Montfort when it is reunited to his whole body after the great judgment, by comparison of its efficacy before Doomsday, when such healing virtue went out of it as a dead member, concealing itself in a slipper of silver...."