The guards were besieged with
anxious faces, supplicating intelligence, and much impeded thereby in
their progress to the abbey.
Outside the gates they found a dense crowd waiting for the news. The
abbot and his brethren were in close council, expecting every moment the
arrival of warders from the beacon.
They were hurried into the chapter-house, together with their prisoner,
who had now taken to the sulks, refusing any reply to the numerous
inquiries made by the servants who followed, eager for the final
disclosure.
The room was lighted by a single lamp. Little of the interior was
visible, save the grim and ascetic faces of the monks who sat nearest to
the centre of illumination. Their features, in deep masses of alternate
light and shadow, looked as if carved out, hard and immovable, from the
oak wainscot. Occasionally, a dull roll of the eye relieved the
oppressive stillness, and the gazer would look out from the mystic world
he inhabited, through these loop-holes of sense, into the world of
sympathies and affections, with which he had long ceased to hold
communion.
Paslew was standing when they entered.
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