--Lear.

The baron was inflexible in his resolution not to let Matilda leave the
castle. The letter, which announced to her the approaching fate of
young Gamwell, filled her with grief, and increased the irksomeness of a
privation which already preyed sufficiently on her spirits, and began to
undermine her health. She had no longer the consolation of the society
of her old friend father Michael: the little fat friar of Rubygill was
substituted as the castle confessor, not without some misgivings in his
ghostly bosom; but he was more allured by the sweet savour of the good
things of this world at Arlingford Castle, than deterred by his awe
of the lady Matilda, which nevertheless was so excessive, from his
recollection of the twang of the bow-string, that he never ventured to
find her in the wrong, much less to enjoin any thing in the shape of
penance, as was the occasional practice of holy confessors, with or
without cause, for the sake of pious discipline, and what was in those
days called social order, namely, the preservation of the privileges
of the few who happened to have any, at the expense of the swinish
multitude who happened to have none, except that of working and being
shot at for the benefit of their betters, which is obviously not the
meaning of social order in our more enlightened times: let us therefore
be grateful to Providence, and sing Te Deum laudamus in chorus with the
Holy Alliance.

The little friar, however, though he found the lady spotless, found the
butler a great sinner: at least so it was conjectured, from the length
of time he always took to confess him in the buttery.

Matilda became every day more pale and dejected: her spirit, which could
have contended against any strenuous affliction, pined in the monotonous
inaction to which she was condemned. While she could freely range the
forest with her lover in the morning, she had been content to return
to her father's castle in the evening, thus preserving underanged the
balance of her duties, habits, and affections; not without a hope that
the repeal of her lover's outlawry might be eventually obtained, by
a judicious distribution of some of his forest spoils among the
holy fathers and saints that-were-to-be,--pious proficients in the
ecclesiastic art equestrian, who rode the conscience of King Henry with
double-curb bridles, and kept it well in hand when it showed mettle
and seemed inclined to rear and plunge. But the affair at Gamwell fe