What do you say, Father?
Because the stone is cemented down and the entrance bricked up, and there is no mason to be found?
Then why not have waited till one could be fetched?
Oh, it is wonderful, all wonderful.

But who am I that I should dare to ask questions?
When the Lord Abbot orders, the lay-brother obeys, for he also is wonderful--a wonderful abbot.
"There, he is tidy now--straight on his back and his feet pointing to the east, at least I hope so, for I could take no good bearings in the dark; and the whole wonderful story comes to its wonderful end.

So give me your hand out of this hole, Father, and say your prayers over the sinful body of this wicked fellow who dared to marry the maid he loved, and to let out the souls of certain holy monks, or rather of their hired rufflers, for monks don't fight, because they wished to separate those whom God--I mean the devil--had joined together, and to add their temporalities to the estate of Mother Church." Then the old priest, who was shivering with cold, and understood little of this dark talk, began to mumble his ritual, skipping those parts of it which he could not remember.

So another grain was planted in the cornfields of death and immortality, though when and where it should grow and what it should bear he neither knew nor cared, who wished to escape from fears and fightings back to his accustomed cell.
It was done, and he and the bearers departed, beating their way against the rough, raw wind, and leaving Thomas Bolle to fill in the grave, which, so long as they were in sight, or rather hearing, he did with much vigour.

When they were gone, however, he descended into the hole under pretence of trampling the loose soil, and there, to be out of the wind, sat himself down upon the feet of the corpse and waited, full of reflections.
"Sir Christopher dead," he muttered to himself.