Chapter 23

CHAPTER IV - IN THE ABBEY CHURCH

In Shoreby Abbey Church the prayers were kept up all night without
cessation, now with the singing of psalms, now with a note or two
upon the bell.

Rutter, the spy, was nobly waked. There he lay, meanwhile, as they
had arranged him, his dead hands crossed upon his bosom, his dead
eyes staring on the roof; and hard by, in the stall, the lad who
had slain him waited, in sore disquietude, the coming of the
morning.

Once only, in the course of the hours, Sir Oliver leaned across to
his captive.

"Richard," he whispered, "my son, if ye mean me evil, I will
certify, on my soul's welfare, ye design upon an innocent man.
Sinful in the eye of Heaven I do declare myself; but sinful as
against you I am not, neither have been ever."

"My father," returned Dick, in the same tone of voice, "trust me, I
design nothing; but as for your innocence, I may not forget that ye
cleared yourself but lamely."

"A man may be innocently guilty," replied the priest. "He may be
set blindfolded upon a mission, ignorant of its true scope. So it
was with me. I did decoy your father to his death; but as Heaven
sees us in this sacred place, I knew not what I did."

"It may be," returned Dick. "But see what a strange web ye have
woven, that I should be, at this hour, at once your prisoner and
your judge; that ye should both threaten my days and deprecate my
anger. Methinks, if ye had been all your life a true man and good
priest, ye would neither thus fear nor thus detest me. And now to
your prayers. I do obey you, since needs must; but I will not be
burthened with your company."

The priest uttered a sigh so heavy that it had almost touched the
lad into some sentiment of pity, and he bowed his head upon his
hands like a man borne down below a weight of care. He joined no
longer in the psalms; but Dick could hear the beads rattle through
his fingers and the prayers a-pattering between his teeth.

Yet a little, and the grey of the morning began to struggle through
the painted casements of the church, and to put to shame the
glimmer of the tapers. The light slowly broadened and brightened,
and presently through the south-eastern clerestories a flush of
rosy sunlight flickered on the walls. The storm was over; the
great clouds had disburdened their snow and fled farther on, and
the new day was breaking on a merry winter landscape sheathed in
white.

A bustle of church officers followed; the bier was carried forth to
the deadhouse, and the stains of blood were cleansed from off the
tiles, that no such ill-omened spectacle should disgrace the
marriage of Lord Shoreby. At the same time, the very ecclesiastics
who had been so dismally