reover, I hold him that deems himself the
best of you, bound to answer to me with his body for this aggression on
my freedom. This defiance hath already been sent to thee by thy sewer;
thou underliest it, and art bound to answer me--There lies my glove."

"I answer not the challenge of my prisoner," said Front-de-Boeuf;
"nor shalt thou, Maurice de Bracy.--Giles," he continued, "hang the
franklin's glove upon the tine of yonder branched antlers: there shall
it remain until he is a free man. Should he then presume to demand it,
or to affirm he was unlawfully made my prisoner, by the belt of Saint
Christopher, he will speak to one who hath never refused to meet a foe
on foot or on horseback, alone or with his vassals at his back!"

The Saxon prisoners were accordingly removed, just as they introduced
the monk Ambrose, who appeared to be in great perturbation.

"This is the real 'Deus vobiscum'," said Wamba, as he passed the
reverend brother; "the others were but counterfeits."

"Holy Mother," said the monk, as he addressed the assembled knights, "I
am at last safe and in Christian keeping!"

"Safe thou art," replied De Bracy; "and for Christianity, here is the
stout Baron Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, whose utter abomination is a Jew;
and the good Knight Templar, Brian de Bois-Guilbert, whose trade is to
slay Saracens--If these are not good marks of Christianity, I know no
other which they bear about them."

"Ye are friends and allies of our reverend father in God, Aymer, Prior
of Jorvaulx," said the monk, without noticing the tone of De Bracy's
reply; "ye owe him aid both by knightly faith and holy charity; for what
saith the blessed Saint Augustin, in his treatise 'De Civitate Dei'---"

"What saith the devil!" interrupted Front-de-Boeuf; "or rather what dost
thou say, Sir Priest? We have little time to hear texts from the holy
fathers."

"'Sancta Maria!'" ejaculated Father Ambrose, "how prompt to ire are
these unhallowed laymen!--But be it known to you, brave knights,
that certain murderous caitiffs, casting behind them fear of God, and
reverence of his church, and not regarding the bull of the holy see, 'Si
quis, suadende Diabolo'---"

"Brother priest," said the Templar, "all this we know or guess at--tell
us plainly, is thy master, the Prior, made prisoner, and to whom?"

"Surely," said Ambrose, "he is in the hands of the men of Belial,
infesters of these woods, and contemners of the holy text, 'Touch not
mine an