few letters are scratched on the soft stone of the wall--the letters
"H. R." are the freshest. These are the initials of the last man who
suffered death in this corner--a young rustic who had murdered his
sweetheart. "H. R." on the prison wall is all his record, and his
body lies under your feet, and the feet of the men who are to die
here in after days pass over his tomb. It is thus that malefactors
are buried, "within the walls of the gaol."

One is glad enough to leave the remains of Robert's place of arms--as
glad as Matilda may have been when "they let her down at night from
the tower with ropes, and she stole out, and went on foot to
Wallingford." Robert seems at first to have made the natural use of
his strength. "Rich he was, and spared not rich or poor, to take
their livelihood away, and to lay up treasures for himself." He
stole the lands of the monks of Abingdon, but of what service were
moats, and walls, and dungeons, and instruments of torture, against
the powers that side with monks?

The Chronicle of Abingdon has a very diverting account of Robert's
punishment and conversion. "He filched a certain field without the
walls of Oxford that of right belonged to the monastery, and gave it
over to the soldiers in the castle. For which loss the brethren were
greatly grieved--the brethren of Abingdon. Therefore, they gathered
in a body before the altar of St. Michael--the very altar that St.
Dunstan the archbishop dedicated--and cast themselves weeping on the
ground, accusing Robert D'Oily, and praying that his robbery of the
monastery might be avenged, or that he might be led to make
atonement." So, in a dream, Robert saw himself taken before Our Lady
by two brethren of Abingdon, and thence carried into the very meadow
he had coveted, where "most nasty little boys," turpissimi pueri,