He brooded on it in the darkness while the wolves prowled about his new encampment and filled the nights with their howling. He caught himself brooding on it during times of the day that were assigned as proper for the prayers and spiritual exercises of the vocational vigil, and he confessed as much to Prior Cheroki the next time the priest rode his Sunday circuit. "You shouldn’t let the romantic imaginations of the others bother you; you have enough trouble with your own," the priest told him, after chiding him for neglecting the exercises and prayers. "They don’t think up questions like that on the basis of what might be true; they concoct the questions on the basis of what might be sensational if it just happened to be true. It’s ridiculous! I can tell you that the Reverend Father Abbot has ordered the entire novitiate to drop the subject." After a moment, he unfortunately added: "There really wasn’t anything about the old man to suggest the supernatural- was there?" with only the faintest trace of hopeful wonder in his tone.