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of chaos could be stopped for just a moment something could jell to form a basis for rebuilding.”
    “Your thieves,” I remarked, interested enough to provoke further discussion, “will merely try to take from each other when they’ve got everything else. Then where’s your stability?”
    As he answered I could feel the depth and passion of the man. “Chaos gathers speed from its own momentum and never ceases of itself. It must be stopped by force of will.”
    He paused, but I knew he would go on. He was in the mood to talk, and I was obviously an attentive listener. “I’m a father of the Church,” he took a new tack, “and I hope not too unworthy a one. Originally, however, I did not take orders because I had an imperative call to holiness. But as a young man my crops were harvested by wandering outlaw bands three times running. Twice, also, my house was looted and burnt, and I had no recourse—no law or power to which I could appeal. It was too commonplace even to excite comment.
    “Only the Church, even though much of its strength has been latterly worn away and dissipated, seemed to have the will to hold anything together. My wife was killed in the last raid, so I joined the fatherhood here. There are many in the Church these days for similar reasons.”
    I kept silent. He wasn’t asking me for sympathy; he was telling me, and probably for a purpose.
    “Because we are a united body and care enough,” he went on, “we’ve been able to keep the wolves away. I’m abbot now, and I try to encourage learning and other proper functions of the monastery, but the bulk of my energies are of necessity used to see that on our lands men can work and live in a normal manner.”
    “You’ve got some very capable-looking assistants,” I remarked, thinking principally of Father Clovis.
    “I’ve needed them,” he grimly declared. “Now as, as I started out to say, some of the robber chiefs are finally discovering that the pickings are getting poorer each year. As a result they’re seizing what lands they think they can hold for their own. They’re savagely rapacious, of course, but it means a settling of some sort; and to protect the revenue of their realms they will eventually have to establish some kind of order within them.”
    “I think I’d rather have no order,” I said drily, “than one of Chilbert’s devising.”
    “That’s where you’re wrong,” he told me. “There must be a modicum of law, even if it’s from a bad source, before anything can develop.”
    I hit nearer home. “Wouldn’t an up-and-coming count like Chilbert think highly of rich, well-cultivated lands like yours so conveniently near his own?”
    “Yes,” the Abbot nodded, “but we’re too strong to be conquered with ease. What he really wants of us is that we should hold our lands from him and pay him for protection—protection from himself as well as from others, naturally. He aspires to hold everything up to Normandy, and he may achieve it. He’s a man of considerable ability.”
    The vision of Chilbert’s ruthless face came before me unpleasantly. “I know the general state of the country and all that, but isn’t there anyone who isn’t a murderous brigand to stand against him? Or why don’t you yourself try for the hegemoney?”
    He shook his head. “That isn’t my function. I admit I’ve been tempted; but I have given myself to the Church, and, as I said before, I have little enough time to be a priest as it is. If I went in for conquest I’d have none.”
    He was not a man to be friends with easily, but I liked him. “Isn’t there anybody else?”
    “There’s a young fellow called Conan—a Breton, for we border on the march country. Though I’m not quite sure what he wants yet he comes of good stock and is, I think, all right. Nevertheless, he has returned comparatively recently after having been away since boyhood, and I don’t yet know how capable he is or what a following he can eventually