squander himself at the bidding of mere appetite; he was certainly no
glutton for anything but office. Still, he was not one to deny himself
the flutter of the caught bird in the hand. He had, like most men who
make themselves monks by calculation, a keen eye for a girl's shape,
carriage, turn of the head, and other allies of the game she loves and
always loses: such things tickled his fancy when they came over his
path; he stooped to take them, and let them dangle for remembrances,
as you string a coin on your chain to remind you at need of a
fortunate voyage. At this particular moment he was tempted, for
instance, to catch and let dangle. The chance light of some shy eye
had touched and then eluded him. I believe he loved the chase more
than the quarry. He knew he must go a-hunting from that moment in
which the light began to play will-o'-the-wisp; for action was his
meat and dominion what he breathed. If you wanted to make Galors
dangerous you had to set him on a vanishing trail. The girl had been a
fool to run, but how was she to know that?

To him now spoke the Abbot Richard after this fashion. "Galors," he
said, "I will speak to you now as to my very self, for if you are not
myself you may be where I sit some day. A young monk who is almoner
already may go far, especially when he is young in religion, but in
years ripe. If you prove to be my other self, you shall go as far as
myself can push you, Galors. Rest assured that the road need not stop
at a mitred abbey. In the hope, then, that you may go further, and I
with you, it is time that I speak my full mind. We have our charter,
as you have seen--and at what cost of sweat and urgency, who can tell
so surely as I? But there, we have it: a great weapon, a lever whereby
we may raise Holy Thorn to a height undreamed of by the abbots of this
realm, and our two selves (perched on the top of Holy Thorn) yet
higher. Yet this charter, gotten for God's greater glory (as He