Melancholy was the aspect of the abbey, and it required no stretch of imagination to fancy that the old structure was deploring the fate of its former ruler.

To those impressed with the idea--and many there were who were so--the very stones of the convent church seemed dissolving into tears.

The statues of the saints appeared to weep, and the great statue of Saint Gregory de Northbury over the porch seemed bowed down with grief.

The grotesquely carved heads on the spouts grinned horribly at the abbot's destroyers, and spouted forth cascades of water, as if with the intent of drowning them.

So deluging and incessant were the showers, that it seemed, indeed, as if the abbey would be flooded.