does more credit to his heels than his arms. I pay tribute to
your valour in calling you hacked and thwacked."

"I never was thwacked in my life," said the baron; "I stood my ground
manfully, and covered my body with my sword. If I had had the luck
to meet with a fighting friar indeed, I might have been thwacked, and
soundly too; but I hold myself a match for any two laymen; it takes nine
fighting laymen to make a fighting friar."

"Whence come you now, holy father?" asked Matilda.

"From Rubygill Abbey," said the friar, "whither I never return:

For I must seek some hermit cell,
Where I alone my beads may tell,
And on the wight who that way fares
Levy a toll for my ghostly pray'rs,
Levy a toll, levy a toll,
Levy a toll for my ghostly pray'rs."

"What is the matter then, father?" said Matilda.

"This is the matter," said the friar: "my holy brethren have held a
chapter on me, and sentenced me to seven years' privation of wine. I
therefore deemed it fitting to take my departure, which they would fain
have prohibited. I was enforced to clear the way with my staff. I have
grievously beaten my dearly beloved brethren: I grieve thereat; but they
enforced me thereto. I have beaten them much; I mowed them down to the
right and to the left, and left them like an ill-reaped field of wheat,
ear and straw pointing all ways, scattered in singleness and jumbled in
masses; and so bade them farewell, saying, Peace be with you. But I
must not tarry, lest danger be in my rear: therefore, farewell, sweet
Matilda; and farewell, noble baron; and farewell, sweet Matilda again,
the alpha and omega of father Michael, the first and the last."

"Farewell, father," said the baron, a little softened; "and God send you
be never assailed by more than fifty men at a time."

"Amen," said the friar, "to that good wish."

"And we shall meet again, father, I trust," said Matilda.

"When the storm is blown over," said the baron.

"Doubt it not," said the friar, "though flooded Trent were between us,
and fifty devils guarded the bridge."

He kissed Matilda's forehead, and walked away without a song.

CHAPTER VIII

Let gallows gape for dog: let man go free.
--Henry V.

A page had been brought up in Gamwell-Hall, who, while he was little,
had been called Little John, and continued to be so called after he had
grown to be a foot taller than any other man in the house. He was full
seven feet high. His lat