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The new prior was a tall, gaunt man, with a great hooked nose and heavy lips; his keen, dark eyes shone fiercely from beneath his shaggy brows. He was still young, full of passionate energy. And with large gesture and loud, metallic voice he loved to speak of hell-fire and the pains of the damned, hating the Jews and heretics with a bitter personal hatred.

‘To the stake!’ he used to say. ‘The earth must be purged of this vermin, and it must be purged by fire.’

He exacted the most absolute obedience from the monks, and pitiless was the punishment for any infringement of his rules…. Brother Jasper feared the man with an almost unearthly terror; when he felt resting upon him the piercing black eyes, he trembled in his seat, and a cold sweat broke out over him. If the prior knew–the thought almost made him faint. And yet the fear of it seemed to drag him on; like a bird before a serpent, he was fascinated. Sometimes he felt sudden impulses to tell him–but the vengeful eyes terrified him.

One day he was in the cloister, looking out at the little green plot in the middle where the monks were buried, wondering confusedly whether all that prayer and effort had been offered up to empty images of what–of the fear of Man? Turning round, he started back and his heart beat, for the prior was standing close by, looking at him with those horrible eyes. Brother Jasper trembled so that he could scarcely stand; he looked down.

‘Brother Jasper!’ The prior’s voice seemed sterner than it had ever been before. ‘Brother Jasper!’

‘Father!’

‘What have you to tell me?’

Jasper looked up at him; the blood fled from his lips.

‘Nothing, my father!’ The prior looked at him firmly, and Jasper thought he read the inmost secrets of his heart.

‘Speak, Brother Jasper!’ said the prior, and his voice was loud and menacing.

Then hurriedly, stuttering in his anxiety, the monk confessed his misery…. A horror came over the prior’s face as he listened, and Jasper became so terrified that he could hardly speak; but the prior seemed to recover himself, and interrupted him with a furious burst of anger.

‘You look over the plain and do not see God, and for that you doubt Him? Miserable fool!’

‘Oh, father, have mercy on me! I have tried so hard. I want to believe. But I cannot.’

‘I cannot! I cannot! What is that? Have men believed for a thousand years–has God performed miracle after miracle–and a miserable monk dares to deny Him?’

‘I cannot believe!’

‘You must!’ His voice was so loud that it rang through the cloisters. He seized Jasper’s clasped hands, raised in supplication before him, and forced him to his knees. ‘I tell you, you shall believe!’

Quivering with wrath, he looked at the prostrate form at his feet, moved by convulsive weeping. He raised his hand as if to strike the monk, but with difficulty contained himself.

Then the prior bade Brother Jasper go to the church and wait. The monks were gathered together, all astonished. They stood in their usual places, but Jasper remained in the middle, away from them, with head cast down. The prior called out to them in his loud, clear voice,–

‘Pray, my brethren, pray for the soul of Brother Jasper, which lies in peril of eternal death.’

The monks looked at him suddenly, and Brother Jasper’s head sank lower, so that no one could see his face. The prior sank to his knees and prayed with savage fervour. Afterwards the monks went their ways; but when Jasper passed them they looked down, and when by chance he addressed a novice, the youth hurried from him without answering. They looked upon him as accursed. The prior spoke no more, but often Jasper felt his stern gaze resting on him, and a shiver would pass through him. In the services Jasper stood apart from the rest, like an unclean thing; he did not join in their prayers, listening confusedly to their monotonous droning; and when a pause came and he felt all eyes turn to him, he put his hands to his face to hide himself.