Roland crossed the fields to the orchard wall which, as the reader will remember, he had already climbed on two occasions.
Punctually at half-past eleven he gave the signal to his men to scale the wall.

By the time they reached the other side the men, if they did not yet know that Roland was brave, were at least sure that he was active.
Roland pointed in the dusk to a door--the one that led from the orchard into the cloister.

Then he sprang ahead through the rank grasses; first, he opened the door; first, he entered the cloister.
All was dark, silent and solitary.

Roland, still guiding his men, reached the refectory.

Absolute solitude; utter silence.
They crossed the hall obliquely, and returned to the garden without alarming a living creature except the owls and the bats.