The room was fair in size, but all of stone and very dark because of the smallness of the windows. The roof went up into a peak. All painted the stone walls were, with woods and leaves, with fowlers among trees setting their nets, and maidens shaking down fruits, and men and women bathing in pools, and the vaults of the ceiling showed the history of the coffin of St. Cuthbert. Each history was divided from the other by ribs of stone painted fairly in scarlet with green scrolls. There you might see how the good monks set out from Holy Island, or how the coffin floated of itself, or how the women called one to the other about the Dun Cow. This room without doubt had formerly been some council chamber or judgment room of the Prince Bishop’s in old days. But its purpose was by now forgotten, and the Lord Dacre had bought the house lately, for he considered the practice of living always in castles to be barbarous and uncomfortable. It was his purpose to pull down this old stone house and build there a fair palace where he might dwell in comfort. But, for the time being, it suited his mother well enough to dwell there. She was sitting in the chair like a throne, leaning forward and perusing a great book of accounts held up to her by an old fellow who knelt before her in black cloths with the badge of the Dacres upon one shoulder and the silver portcullis of Croy upon the other. The old lady puzzled over this tale of capons, pence, eggs, bolls of wheat, oats and the rest that her tenants owed her. She thought it was not enough. And consequently messengers came in from the Prince Bishop, from the Dean, from the Chapter, down to the sacristan, to ask how it was with her health after her long journey from London city to Durham. She had come there the night before. And one brought her the offering of a deer, another of two fat geese, a third a salmon, a fourth a basket of strawberries grown beneath a southern wall. And, as each of these things was brought before her, she would lean forward and look upon it, and so she would lose her place in the book of accounts and scold perpetually at the old man that held it up for her. In one of the deep, narrow window spaces stood a notable man of forty, stout and grave, with a brown beard cut squarely, and wearing a very rich blue cloak and blue round hat with a great white plume. He said nothing at all, but pared his finger-nails with a little knife. He looked between whiles out upon the high, wooded banks of the Wear that confronted his gaze across the river, and were all ablaze with the sunlight: once the Princess Rohtraut turned her head stiffly to have sight of him. But he was standing too far in the depth of the window, her chair being between one window and the other. So she cried out in a rough voice that was at once insulting and indulgent: