` So have we , ' Una whispered . ` But it was n't wicked a bit . ' ` Elias took a little of the stuff with him , and thrice yearly he would return to Pevensey as a chapman , selling at no price or profit , till they suffered him to sleep in the empty room , where he would plumb and grope , and steal away a few bars . The great store of it still remained , and by long brooding he had come to look on it as his own . Yet when we thought how we should lift and convey it , we saw no way . This was before the Word of the Lord had come to me . A walled fortress possessed by Normans ; in the midst a forty-foot tide-well out of which to remove secretly many horse-loads of gold ! Hopeless ! So Elias wept . Adah , his wife , wept too . She had hoped to stand beside the Queen 's Christian tiring-maids at Court when the King should give them that place at Court which he had promised . Why not ? She was born in England -- an odious woman . ` The present evil to us was that Elias , out of his strong folly , had , as it were , promised the King that he would arm him with more gold . Wherefore the King in his camp stopped his ears against the Barons and the people . Wherefore men died daily . Adah so desired her place at Court , she besought Elias to tell the King where the treasure lay , that the King might take it by force , and -- they would trust in his gratitude . Why not ? This Elias refused to do , for he looked on the gold as his own . They quarrelled , and they wept at the evening meal , and late in the night came one Langton -- a priest , almost learned -- to borrow more money for the Barons .
XXXXX and Adah went to their chamber . '
Barons Court Elias Langton Normans Una evening horse-loads tide-well yearly