ible to hear, and so to asking me questions
about myself. I told him that I had fled my own country for a
man-slaying, hoping, may Heaven forgive me! to make him think the higher
of me for the deed.

"So we all begin," said he; "a shrewd blow, or a fair wench; a death, or
a birth unlawful, 'tis all one forth we are driven to the world and the
wars. Yet you have started well,--well enough, and better than I gave
your girl's face credit for. Bar steel and rope, you may carry some
French gold back to stinking Scotland yet."

He gave me so much credit as this for a deed that deserved none, but
rather called for rebuke from him, who, however unworthy, was in
religion, and wore the garb of the Blessed Francis. But very far from
fortifying me in virtuous courses, as was his bounden duty, there was no
wickedness that he did not try to teach me, till partly I hated him, and
partly, I fear, I admired one so skilled in evil. The truth is, as I
said, that this man, for that time, was my master. He was learned in all
the arts by which poor and wandering folk can keep their bellies full
wandering by the way. With women, ugly and terrible of aspect as he was,
he had a great power: a pious saying for the old; a way with the young
which has ever been a mystery to me, unless, as some of the learned
think, all women are naturally lovers of wickedness, if strength and
courage go with it. What by wheedling, what by bullying, what by tales
of pilgrimages to holy shrines (he was coming from Jerusalem by way of
Rome, so he told all we met), he ever won a welcome.

Other more devilish cantrips he played, one of them at the peasant's
house where we rested on the first night of our common travel. The
Lenten supper which they gave us, with no little kindness, was ended, and
we were sitting in the firelight, Brother Thomas discoursing largely of
his pilgrimages, and of his favour among the high clergy. Thus, at I
know not what convent of the Clarisses, {5} in Italy, the holy Sisters
had pressed on him a relic of Monsieur St. Aignan, the patron of the good
town of Orleans. To see this relic, the farmer, his wife, and his sons
and daughters crowded eagerly; it was but a little blackened finger bone,
yet they were fain to touch it, as is the custom. But this he would not
yet allow.

"Perchance some of you," he said, "are already corrupt, not knowing it,
with the poisonous breath of that damnable Hussite heresy, which is
blowing from th