ter the market. They were a motley
company. By the host's side sat a knight on his way home from
pilgrimage to Compostella, or perhaps a mission to Spain, with a couple
of squires and other attendants, and converse of political import seemed
to be passing between him and a shrewd-looking man in a lawyer's hood
and gown, the recorder of Winchester, who preferred being a daily guest
at the White Hart to keeping a table of his own. Country franklins and
yeomen, merchants and men-at-arms, palmers and craftsmen, friars and
monks, black, white, and grey, and with almost all, Father Shoveller had
greeting or converse to exchange. He knew everybody, and had friendly
talk with all, on canons or crops, on war or wool, on the prices of pigs
or prisoners, on the news of the country side, or on the perilous
innovations in learning at Oxford, which might, it was feared, even
affect Saint Mary's College at Winchester.

He did not affect outlandish fishes himself, and dined upon pike, but
observing the curiosity of his guests, he took good care to have them
well supplied with grampus; also in due time with varieties of the
pudding and cake kind which had never dawned on their forest--bred
imagination, and with a due proportion of good ale--the same over which
the knight might be heard rejoicing, and lauding far above the Spanish
or French wines, on which he said he had been half starved.

Father Shoveller mused a good deal over his pike and its savoury
stuffing. He was not by any means an ideal monk, but he was equally far
from being a scandal. He was the shrewd man of business and manager of
his fraternity, conducting the farming operations and making all the
bargains, following his rule respectably according to the ordinary
standard of his time, but not rising to any spirituality, and while duly
observing the fast day, as to the quality of his food, eating with the
appetite of a man who lived in the open fields.

But when their hunger was appeased, with many a fragment given to
Spring, the young Birkenholts, wearied of the endless talk that was
exchanged over the tankard, began to grow restless, and after exchanging
signs across Father Shoveller's solid person, they simultaneously rose,
and began to thank him and say they must pursue their journey.

"How now, not so fast, my sons," said the Father; "tarry a bit, I have
more to say to thee. Prayers and provender, thou knowst--I'll come
anon. So, sir, didst say yonder beggar