Aye, answered Cicely, she knew it and never would forget it, but it was chill for him sitting on that bench, he must come in.  Christopher laughed at her, and answered—­

“Sweetheart, if you could have seen the bench on which it was my lot to sit yonder off the coast of Africa, but new recovered from the wound which I had of Maldon’s men at Cranwell Towers, you would not be anxious for me here.  There for six long months chained to Jeffrey and to Father Martin, for it pleased those heathen devils to keep the three of us together, perhaps that they might watch us better, through the hot days that scorched us, and the chill, wet nights, we laboured at our oars, while infidel overseers ran up and down the boards and thrashed us with their whips of hide.  Yes,” he added slowly, “they thrashed us as though we were oxen in a yoke.  You have seen the scars upon my back.”

“Oh, God! to think of it,” she murmured; “you, a noble Englishman, beaten by those savage wretches like a brute?  How did you bear it, Christopher?”

“I know not, Wife.  I think that had it not been for that angel in man’s form, the priest Martin—­peace be to his noble soul—­that angel who thrice at least has saved my life, I should have dashed out my brains against the thwarts, or starved myself to death, or provoked the Moors to kill me; I, who, thinking you dead, had no hope to live for.  But Martin taught me otherwise; he preached patience and submission, saying that I did not suffer for nothing—­of his own miseries he never spoke—­and that he was sure that fearful as was my lot, all things worked together for good to me.”

“And therefore it was that you lived on, Husband?  Oh!  I’ll build a shrine to that saint Martin.”

“Not altogether, dear.  I’ll tell you true; I lived for vengeance—­vengeance on Clement Maldon, the man, or the devil, who wrought me all this ill, and, being yet young, made me old with grief and pain,” and he pointed to his scarred forehead and the hair above, that was now grizzled with white, “and vengeance, too, upon those worshippers of Mohammed, my masters.  Yes; though Martin reproved me when I made confession to him, I think it was for that I lived, and the saints know,” he added grimly, “afterwards at the sack, and elsewhere, I took it on the Turks.  Oh! you should have seen the last meeting of Jeffrey and myself with the captain of that galley and his officers who had so often beaten us.  No, I am glad you did not see it, for it was fierce and bloody; even the hard-hearted Spaniards stared.”

He paused, and perhaps to change the current of his mind—­for during all his after-life, when Christopher brooded on these things he grew gloomy for hours, and even days—­Cicely said hurriedly—­

“I wonder what has chanced to our enemy, the Abbot.  The search has been close, the roads are watched, and we know that he had none with him, for all his foreign soldiers are slain or taken.  I think he must be dead in the fire, Christopher.”