e tone of Ralph would
affect now in Oxford. Plain stove, floor strewn with rushes, rude
tapestry around the walls, with those uncouth faces and figures
worked thereon which give antiquarians a low idea of the personal
appearance of the people of the day, a solid table, upon which a
bear might dance without breaking it, two or three stools, a carved
cabinet, a rude hearth and chimney piece, a rough basin and ewer of
red ware in deal setting, a pallet bed in a recess.

And the students, the undergraduates of the period, were worth
studying. One had a black eye, another a plastered head, a third an
arm in a sling, a fourth a broken nose. Martin stared at them in
amazement.

"We had a tremendous fight here last night. The Northerners
besieged us in our hostel. We made a sally and levelled a few of
the burring brutes before the town guard came up and spoiled the
fun. What a pity we can't fight like gentlemen with swords and
battle axes!"

"Why not, if you must fight at all?" said Martin, who had been
taught at Kenilworth to regard fists and cudgels as the weapons of
clowns.

"Because, young greenhorn," said Hugh, "he who should bring a sword
or other lethal weapon into the University would shortly be
expelled by alma mater from her nursery, according to the statutes
for that case made and provided."

"But why do you come here, if you love fighting better than
learning? There is plenty of fighting in the world."

"Some come because they are made to come, others from a vocation
for the church, like thyself perhaps, others from an inexplicable
love of books; you should hear us when our professor Asinus
Asinorum takes us in class.

"Amo, amas, amat, see me catch a rat. Rego, regis, regit, let me
sweat a bit."

"Tace, no more Latin till tomorrow. Here is a venison pasty from a
Woodstock deer, smuggled into the town beneath a load of hay, under
the very noses of the watch."

"Who shot it?"

"Mad Hugh and I."

"Where did you get the load of hay from?"

"Oh, a farmer's boy was driving it into town. We knocked him down,
then tied him to a tree. It didn't hurt him much, and we left him a
walnut for his supper. Then Hugh put on his smock and other
ragtags, and hiding the deer under the hay, drove it straight to
the door, and Magog, who loves the smell of venison, took it in,
but we made him buy the bulk of the carcase."

"How much did he give?"

"A rose noble, and a good pie out of the animal into the bargain."