Adventure Magazine Cover, August 18, 1921 — page 48: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

42 again on the ramparts, red tongues of flame stabbing the dusk. The din of arms came from the wall. De Born was master in High Tower. Gislac looked down at the closed litter where Geoffrey slept, stupefied by the draft the physician had given him. The old man’s eyes were sad, but there was resolu- tioninthem. Hishand stole to his sword-hilt. “Gislac has still a charge to keep and a sword wherewith to keep it,” he murmured. Then aloud: “Thomas, we lodge tonight at Fulham Priory. The good priests will receive broken men, though nobles will not and peasants dare not. And there, lads, I will bid you farewell. You must go to Umfra- ville.” They did not answer. Their hearts were full of grief and resentment. CHAPTER X HUNTED Te moon had set when they entered the spacious park in which lay Fulham Priory, so that its fair garden-walks and tall elms appeared but as denser masses of the dark about them. Notaray of light issued from the windows of the square stone build- ing nestled far back amid its trees and hedges; not a sound from within gave prom- ise of its hospitality. Setting down the litter, the four men-at- arms waited while he who had been their master knocked at the oaken doors. No answer. Again he knocked and waited long; but the silence was deep as the night. Gislac hammered with his sword-hilt. In- stantly a voice, high-pitched and quavering with fright, answered: “Who knocks? Are ye men of peace?” “Not only men of peace,” Sir Giles re- torted, ‘but men in distress, such as your Savior bids you take in.” To this there was no reply, only silence as before, till the Norman felt his temper rise. It was quite ten minutes before he heard the bolts slide back, the door creak on its hinges and a white-robed monk tim- idly bid him enter. But the monk bore neither rush-light nor candle. The hall was dark. “You are not the prior?” Sir Giles asked, as his guide led the way down a black cor- ridor. Adventure Behind him the men-at-arms shuffled along with the litter, muttering as they stumbled in the dark, gropmg between walls that seemed to reach out at them. “God forbid that I should aspire to that honor,” the Cistercian made answer. “I am Brother John, the porter. Our worthy prior awaits you in the refectory.” He stopped and rapped softly at a door concealed by the gloom. Straightway a square of light opened in the wall, flooding the corridor. Sir Giles found himself in the entrance to a wide rectangular room that had once been a cloistered court, but which was now a roofed hall. The sturdy Norman pillars met in the sweeping arches on all four sides. Torches set in cressets illumined the bare, stern dig- nity of the room. The very stones seemed eloquent of austere poverty. There was almost no ornament, and that the simplest of the mason’s art. But that which held the eyes of Gislac and touched his followers’ hearts with awe was the white figure at the extreme end of the refectory, high on a dais above the plain wooden tables and the rough benches, raised above all else there, but raised in unpre- tentious reverence. His back to them, the prior knelt before a great crucifix, his arms outspread, his eyes turned to the face that looked down from the cross. Below the dais, also kneeling, a second monk attended the devotion of his superior. But he seemed absorbed, drawn into the high white figure of the prior, about whom all in that humble room centered and had its spiritual being. One felt that here was a soul great in humility, purified by suffering, interpreting by precept and example the Christ on that high crucifix to the pious monks he ruled. His arms dropped to his sides. Rising, he backed slowly down the steps of the dais, with bent head and folded arms. Not till he had descended did he turn to receive his guests. As he advanced to meet them, his hand raised in benediction, Gislac knew that here indeed was a man of God. The prior’s tonsured head was bare; his feet were bare; his white robe was of coarsest stuff. The face above his frock was pale; transfused with the spirit that shone from his eyes. They were dark eyes, tender, yet stern. The loose sleeve, falling back from the up- raised arm, revealed the unhealed scars of pitiless, self-inflicted penance. COmiclbook C©