“Do for them?  Do for them?” gasped Thomas, worked up to fury by this recital of his wrongs.  “Why, if I dared I’d cut their throats, every one, and grallock them like deer,” and he ground his strong white teeth.  “But I am afraid.  They have my soul, and month by month I must confess.  You remember, Emlyn, I warned you when you and the lady would have ridden to London before the siege.  Well, afterward—­I must confess it—­the Abbot heard it himself, and oh! sore, sore was my penance.  Before I had done with it my ribs showed through my skin and my back was like a red osier basket.  There’s only one thing I didn’t tell them, because, after all, it is no sin to grub the earth off the face of a corpse.”

“Ah!” said Emlyn, looking at him.  “You’re not to be trusted.  Well, I thought as much.  Good-bye, Thomas Bolle, you coward.  I’ll find me a man for a friend, not a whimpering, priest-ridden hound who sets a Latin blessing which he does not understand above his honour.  God in heaven! to think I should ever have loved such a thing.  Oh!  I am shamed, I am shamed.  I’ll go wash my hands.  Shut your trap and get you gone down your rat-run, Thomas Bolle, and, living or dead, never dare to speak to me again.  Also forget not to tell your monks how I called you to my side—­for that’s witchcraft, you know, and I shall burn for it, and your soul gain benefit.  God in heaven! to think that once you were Thomas Bolle,” and she made as though to go away.

He stretched out his great arm and caught her by the robe, exclaiming—­

“What would you have me do, Emlyn?  I can’t bear your scorn.  Take it off me or I go kill myself.”

“That’s what you had best do.  You’ll find the devil a better master than a foreign abbot.  Farewell for ever.”

“Nay, nay; what’s your will?  Soul or no soul, I’ll work it.”

“Will you?  Will you indeed?  If so, stay a moment,” and she ran down the chapel, bolting the doors; then returned to him, saying—­

“Now come forth, Thomas, and since you are once more a man, kiss me as you used to do twenty years ago and more.  You’ll not confess to that, will you?  There.  Now, kneel before the altar here and swear an oath.  Nay, listen to it before you swear, for it is wide.”

Emlyn said the oath to him.  It was a great and terrible oath.  Under it he bound himself to be her slave and join himself with her in working woe to the monks of Blossholme, and especially to their Abbot, Clement Maldon, in payment of the wrongs that these had done to them both; in payment for the murder of Sir John Foterell and of Christopher Harflete, and of the imprisonment and robbery of Cicely Harflete, the daughter of the one and the wife of the other.  He bound himself to do those things which she should tell him.  He bound himself neither in the confessional nor, should it come to that, on the bed of torture or the scaffold to breathe a word of all their counsel.  He prayed that if he did so his soul might pay the price in everlasting torment, and of all these things he took Heaven to be his witness.