case and so acquire the lands of their neighbor! If our cause be
just, as indeed I believe that it is, then it were better that it
be judged at the King's assizes at Guildford, and so I decree that
the case be now dismissed from the Abbey court so that it can be
heard elsewhere."

Nigel breathed a prayer to the three sturdy saints who had stood
by him so manfully and well in the hour of his need. "Abbot
John," said he, "I never thought that any man of my name would
utter thanks to a Cistercian of Waverley; but by Saint Paul! you
have spoken like a man this day, for it would indeed be to play
with cogged dice if the Abbey's case is to be tried in the Abbey
court."

The eighty white-clad brethren looked with half resentful, half
amused eyes as they listened to this frank address to one who, in
their small lives, seemed to be the direct vice-regent of Heaven.
The archers had stood back from Nigel, as though he was at liberty
to go, when the loud voice of the summoner broke in upon the
silence--

"If it please you, holy father Abbot," cried the voice, "this
decision of yours is indeed secundum legem and intra vires so far
as the civil suit is concerned which lies between this person and
the Abbey. That is your affair; but it is I, Joseph the summoner,
who have been grievously and criminally mishandled, my writs,
papers and indentures destroyed, my authority flouted, and my
person dragged through a bog, quagmire or morass, so that my
velvet gabardine and silver badge of office were lost and are, as
I verily believe, in the morass, quagmire or bog aforementioned,