Rogier broke into a roar of laughter, when Cadell, with white face and in agitated voice, told him that Pabo was not dead.

"'Sdeath!" he exclaimed. "I never quite believed that he was."

"Not that he was dead?" cried the chaplain. "Did you ever see a man burnt as black as a coal and live after it?"

"That was not he. I doubted it then."

"It must have been he. He was buried as a dog in a dungheap, and"—Cadell lowered his voice—"he is no longer there."

"Because these fellows here have removed the body and laid it in consecrated ground. It was a trick played on us, clever in its way, though I was not wholly convinced. Now I shall let them understand what it is to play jokes with me. I can joke as well."

"But what do you mean, Rogier?"

"That these Welsh rogues have endeavored to make us believe that the old Archpriest is dead, so that our vengeance might be disarmed and he allowed to escape. He is in hiding somewhere. Where is that fellow who informed you?"

"Nothing further is to be got out of him."

"We shall see."

"I pray you desist. He may be useful to us; but it must not be suspected that he is in treaty with us."

"There is some reason in this. I shall find out without his aid."

"Do nothing till I have seen the bishop. He will be very distressed—angry. For I assured him that a miracle had been wrought. It was such an important miracle. It showed to all that Heaven was on our side."

Rogier laughed.

"We can cut and carve for ourselves without the help of miracles," said he.

"I shall go at once," said Cadell; "the bishop must be communicated with immediately—and his pleasure known."

Bernard of St. David's was at his castle of Llawhaden, near Narberth. He was there near his Norman friends and supporters. He had no relish for banishment to the bare and remote corner of Pembrokeshire stretching as a hand into the sea, as though an appeal from Wales to Ireland for assistance. Moreover, Bernard was by no means assured that his presence where was the throne would be acceptable, and that it might not provoke some second popular commotion which would cost him a further loss of teeth. Llawhaden lay in a district well occupied by Norman soldiers and Flemish settlers. The residence there was commodious in a well-wooded and fertile district. The castle was strong, secure against surprises, built by architect and masons imported from Normandy, as were all those constructed by the conquerors throughout the South of Wales.

In Llawhaden Bernard lived like a temporal baron, surrounded by fighting men, and never going abroad without his military retinue. It was said that he ever wore a fine steel-chain coat of mail under his woolen ecclesiastical habit. In his kitchen, as about his person, no native was suffered to serve, so suspicious was he lest an attempt should be made on his life, by poison or by dagger.

Happily, he was not required to perform any ecclesiastical functions, for he was profoundly ignorant of these; but the situation was such that he was not required to ordain clergy or consecrate churches. Clergy were not lacking. The ne'er-do-weels of England, men who were for their immorality or crimes forced to leave their cures, hasted to Wales, where they readily found preferment, as the great object in view with the invaders was to dispossess the natives of their land and of their churches.

"So you are here," said the bishop. He spoke with inconvenience, as one front tooth had been knocked out and another broken. Unless he drew down his upper lip, his words issued from his mouth indistinctly, accompanied by a disagreeable hiss. "Hah!—have the bumpkins paid up so readily that you are here with the money? How many marks have they had to disgorge?"

"Your fatherliness," said the chaplain, "I have brought nothing with me save unsatisfactory tidings."

"What! They will not pay?"

"They can be made to find the silver," said Cadell; "that I do not doubt. For centuries those men of Caio have prospered and have hoarded. Other lands have been wasted, not theirs; other stores pillaged, theirs have been untouched."

"It is well. They will bear further squeezing. But what ails thee? Thou lookest as though thou hadst bitten into a crab-apple."

"I have come touching the miracle."

"Ah! to be sure—the miracle. I have sent despatches containing complete accounts thereof to his Majesty King Henry, and to my late gracious mistress, the Queen. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who consecrated me at Westminster, looked as sour as do you. He would fain have had the consent of the Pope, as father of Christendom, but the King would brook no delay, and the Archbishop was not so stubborn as to hold out—glad in this, to get a bishop of St. David's to swear submission to the stool of Augustine. I have sent him as well a narrative of the miracle; it will salve his conscience to see that Heaven is manifestly with me. Moreover, I have had my crow over Urban of Llandaff. He has not a miracle to boast of to bolster up his authority."

"My gracious master and lord, I grieve to have to assure you that there has been some mistake in the matter for which I am in no way blameworthy."

"How a mistake?" asked Bernard testily.

"There has been no miracle."

"No miracle! But there has. I have it in your own handwriting."

"I wrote under a misapprehension."

"Misapprehension, you Welsh hound! You misapprehend your man, if you think I will allow you to retract in this matter."

"I really do not know what to say, for I do not know what to think about the circumstance. It is, I fear, certain that Pabo lives."

"Pabo lives! Why you saw him burnt to a coal! I have your written testimony. You invoked the witness of the Dean of Llandeilo, and he has formally corroborated it. I have it under his hand. You declared that there were hundreds who could bear testimony to the same."

"Lord Bishop, I cannot now say what is the truth. It is certain that your brother and we all were shown the charred relics of a man, whom the inhabitants of Caio were proceeding to inter with the rites of religion, as their late Archpriest. When I learned that he had died by fire, by the judgment of God, then I stayed the ceremony, and bade that his body should be laid under a dungheap."

"You did well. It is there still."

"It is not, my Lord Bishop."

"Do you mean to declare that he is risen from his grave?"

"Your brother is of opinion that we have been deceived by the tribesmen of Caio, so as to make us suppose that this their Archpriest and chief was dead, and that he is now in concealment somewhere. He further saith that the people have secretly removed the dead man from the place where cast, and have laid him in the churchyard."

"But—who can he have been?"

"I know not."

"And I care not," said the bishop. "Pabo was struck by fire from heaven, because he opposed me. Why when Ahaziah sent captains of fifty with their fifties against the prophet Elijah, did not lightning fall and consume them and their fifties twice? Is a ragged old prophet under the law of Moses to be served better than me, a high prelate under the Gospel? I see but too plainly, Cadell, you, being a Welshman, would rob me of the glory that appertains to me. What grounds have you for this preposterous assertion?"

"There is a young man, the son of a former Archpriest, who has been slighted and overpassed, and has harbored resentment against Pabo. He came to me secretly and told me that we had been deceived—they used subtlety so as to be able the more effectually to conceal their chief from your just resentment."

"I do not believe a word of it. I have written and sent certified testimonies that Pabo was burned by fire from Heaven. Where is this alleged Pabo?"

"I know not. The young man I speak of is ready to assist us to secure him."

"I do not want him. I want and will have my miracle. Did you not hear me? When I visited Caio, I said to Pabo that I would call down fire from Heaven upon his head. I take you to witness that you heard me."

"But what, my dear master and lord, if he were to appear, and all men were to discover that there had been no miracle?"

"I will have my miracle," persisted Bernard in petulant tones. "I have gone too far with it to retract. Odds' life! I should become a laughing-stock all through Wales; and I know well the humor of his Majesty. Over his cups he would tell the tale and burst his sides with laughing; and he would cast it in the teeth of my gracious mistress, the Queen. I have gone too far—I will have my miracle. If there be a man who is going about calling himself Pabo the Archpriest, let him be arrested as an impostor."

"There will be talk concerning it."

"There must be no noise. By the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, we must hush it up! As a minister of the Truth, a prelate of the Church, it is my sovereign duty to put down all imposition. Go now! I will even send a letter to Gerald of Windsor, who is at his castle of Carreg Cennen, in a retired vale away from every road, and from most habitations. I will bid him receive this false Pabo, and take such measures that the wretched impostor trouble us no more. As to my brother, bid him, if he lay hand on this dissembler and deceiver of men, this lying rogue, to get him away unnoticed, and with no noise, out of Caio, where he may be observed, and to send him under escort and by night to Gerald at Carreg Cennen."

"It shall be so. And—with regard to the young man of whom I spake?"

"That young man is a pest. Why should he have disturbed us with his suggestions?"

"I venture to remind your fatherliness that he has but allowed us to see what is at work behind our backs. He tells us what is known to all men in Caio. Pabo might come forward at any time and show that he is alive."

"That is true. What further about this young man?"

"He offers to be the means of putting Pabo in our power."

"And his price?"

"In the event of your fatherliness transferring me to some other place of usefulness, such as a canonry at St. Davids, he protests that were he named to the Archpriesthood, he would in all ways subserve your interests. As he belongs to the chieftain's family, he would be well received by the people, and their suspicions disarmed."

"Well, well, promise him anything—everything. I shall not be bound to performance. But hark you, Master Cadell! If this miracle be a little breathed upon, then you must contrive me another that cannot be upset by scoffers. Find me a paralytic or a blind person whom I may recover. That would go mightily to confirm the miracle of the burning of Pabo. And bid my brother act warily and proceed secretly, require him to treat this dissembler as what he is—a personator of a man who is on sure warrant dead, slain by the judgment of God."

"I would fain have it under your hand and seal," said Cadell. "Your brother Rogier acts after his own will, and is not amenable to my advice."

"You shall have it—also a letter to Gerald of Windsor. Get you away now. The epistles shall be ready by night, and you shall ride at cockcrow. And, mind you this, Master Cadell, if you lust after a canonry, provide me a new miracle. As to that already wrought, at all hazards it must be maintained. Not on my account. I am a poor worm, a nothing! But for policy, for the good of the Cause; lest these Welsh should come to crow over us."