“No matter,” I said, “I have men here.”  So they entered and began to shoulder the tall ladders:  the prior was very busy.  “You will find them just the right length, my son, trust me for that.”  He seemed quite a jolly, pleasant man, I could not understand his nursing furious revenge; but his face darkened strangely whenever he happened to mention her name.

As we were starting he came and stood outside the gate, and putting his lantern down that the light of it might not confuse his sight, looked earnestly into the night, then said:  “The wind has fallen, the snow flakes get thinner and smaller every moment, in an hour it will be freezing hard, and will be quite clear; everything depends’upon the surprise being complete; stop a few minutes yet, my son.”  He went away chuckling, and returned presently with two more sturdy monks carrying something:  they threw their burdens down before my feet, they consisted of all the white albs in the abbey:  “There, trust an old man, who has seen more than one stricken fight in his carnal days; let the men who scale the walls put these over their arms, and they will not be seen in the least.  God make your sword sharp, my son.”

So we departed, and when I met Amald again, he said that what the prior had done was well thought of; so we agreed that I should take thirty men, an old squire of our house, well skilled in war, along with them, scale the walls as quietly as possible, and open the gates to the rest.

I set off accordingly, after that with low laughing we had put the albs all over us, wrapping the ladders also in white.  Then we crept very warily and slowly up to the wall; the moat was frozen over, and on the ice the snow lay quite thick; we all thought that the guards must be careless enough, when they did not even take the trouble to break the ice in the moat So we listened- there was no sound at all, the Christmas midnight mass had long ago been over, it was nearly three o’clock, and the moon began to clear, there was scarce any snow falling now, only a flake or two from some low hurrying cloud or other:  the wind sighed gently about the round towers there, but it was bitter cold, for it had begun to freeze again; we listened for some minutes, about a quarter of an hour I think, then at a sign from me, they raised the ladders carefully, muffled as they were at the top with swathings of wool.  I mounted first, old Squire Hugh followed last; noiselessly we ascended, and soon stood altogether on the walls; then we carefully lowered the ladders again with long ropes; we got our swords and axes from out of the folds of our priests’ raiments, and set forward, till we reached the first tower along the wall; the door was open, in the chamber at the top there was a fire slowly smouldering, nothing else; we passed through it, and began to go down the spiral staircase, I first, with my axe shortened in my hand.-"What if we were surprised there,” I thought, and I longed to be out in the air again;-"What if the door were fast at the bottom.”