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 . Elias and Adah went to their chamber . ' Kadmiel laughed scornfully in his beard . The shots across the valley stopped as the shooting party changed their ground for the last beat .
` So it was I , not XXXXX , ' he went on quietly , ` that made terms with Langton touching the fortieth of the New Laws . '
Adah Barons Court Elias England Kadmiel King Langton daily evening