out together, leaving Sir Ralph's followers at
the abbey. The knight was mounted on a spirited charger; brother Michael
on a large heavy-trotting horse; and the little fat friar on a plump
soft-paced galloway, so correspondent with himself in size, rotundity,
and sleekness, that if they had been amalgamated into a centaur, there
would have been nothing to alter in their proportions.

"Do you know," said the little friar, as they wound along the banks of
the stream, "the reason why lake-trout is better than river-trout, and
shyer withal?"

"I was not aware of the fact," said Sir Ralph.

"A most heterodox remark," said brother Michael: "know you not, that
in all nice matters you should take the implication for absolute, and,
without looking into the FACT WHETHER, seek only the reason why? But the
fact is so, on the word of a friar; which what layman will venture to
gainsay who prefers a down bed to a gridiron?"

"The fact being so," said the knight, "I am still at a loss for the
reason; nor would I undertake to opine in a matter of that magnitude:
since, in all that appertains to the good things either of this world
or the next, my reverend spiritual guides are kind enough to take the
trouble of thinking off my hands."

"Spoken," said brother Michael, "with a sound Catholic conscience. My
little brother here is most profound in the matter of trout. He has
marked, learned, and inwardly digested the subject, twice a week at
least for five-and-thirty years. I yield to him in this. My strong
points are venison and canary."

"The good qualities of a trout," said the little friar, "are firmness
and redness: the redness, indeed, being the visible sign of all other
virtues."

"Whence," said brother Michael, "we choose our abbot by his nose:

The rose on the nose doth all virtues disclose:
For the outward grace shows
That the inward overflows,
When it glows in the rose of a red, red nose."

"Now," said the little friar, "as is the firmness so is the redness, and
as is the redness so is the shyness."

"Marry why?" said brother Michael. "The solution is not
physical-natural, but physical-historical, or natural-superinductive.
And thereby hangs a tale, which may be either said or sung:

The damsel stood to watch the fight
By the banks of Kingslea Mere,
And they brought to her feet her own true knight
Sore-wounded on a bier.

She knelt by him his wounds to bind,
She washed them with many a te