In that moment he knew that it was time for
him to leave Malford and prepare himself to be a priest elsewhere, and
otherwise than by what the Rector had stigmatized as the pseudo-monastic
life.
Mark wondered when he had left the chaplain to his ferocious
meditations what would have been the effect of that diatribe upon some
of his brethren. He smiled to himself, as he sat over his solitary
supper in the Refectory, to picture the various expressions he could
imagine upon their faces when they came hotfoot from the Guest-chamber
with the news of what manner of priest was in their midst. And while he
was sipping his bowl of pea-soup, he looked up at the image of St.
George and perceived that the dragon's expression bore a distinct
resemblance to that of the Reverend Andrew Hett. That night it seemed to
Mark, in one of those waking trances that occur like dreams between one
disturbed sleep and another, that the presence of the chaplain was
shaking the flimsy foundations of the Abbey with such ruthlessness that
the whole structure must soon collapse.
"It's only the wind," he murmured, with that half of his mind which was
awake. "March is going out like a dragon."
After Mass next day, when Mark was giving the chaplain his breakfast,
the latter asked who kept the key of the tabernacle.
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