have you not from that hour striven to undo me, whom you fear?"

"I deny it all," said the Abbot again. "These be but empty lies bred of
your malice, Sir John Foterell."

"Empty words, are they, my Lord Abbot! Well, I tell you that they are
all written down and signed in due form. I tell you I had witnesses you
knew naught of who heard them with their ears. Here stands one of them
behind my chair. Is it not so, Jeffrey?"

"Aye, master," answered the serving-man. "I chanced to be in the little
chamber beyond the wainscot with others waiting to escort the Abbot
home, and heard them all, and afterward I and they put our marks upon
the writing. As I am a Christian man that is so, though, master, this is
not the place that I should have chosen to speak of it, however much I
might be wronged."

"It will serve my turn," said the enraged knight, "though it is true
that I will speak of it louder elsewhere, namely, before the King's
Council. To-morrow, my Lord Abbot, this paper and I go to London, and
then you shall learn how well it pays you to try to pluck a Foterell of
his own."

Now it was the Abbot's turn to be frightened. His smooth, olive-coloured
cheeks sank in and went white, as though already he felt the cord about
his throat. His jewelled hand shook, and he caught the arm of one of his
chaplains and hung to it.

"Man," he hissed, "do you think that you can utter such false threats
and go hence to ruin me, a consecrated abbot? I have dungeons here; I