rine of the Blessed Saint Alban."

"What kind of pilgrim is he?"

"Madam, to speak truly, I know not; but he appears of a reverend and
gracious aspect, a young man well spoken and well disposed. Madam
knows it waxeth late, and the ways are dark and foul."

"I would not have a young man, who is given to pilgrimages and good
works, to faint and starve by the wayside. Let him sleep with the
haywards."

"But, Madam, he is a young man of goodly appearance and conversation;
saving your reverence, I would not wish to ask him to eat and sleep
with churls."

"He must sleep without. Let him, however, enter and eat of our poor
table."

"Madam, I will strictly enjoin him what you command. He hath with him,
however, an instrument of music and would fain cheer you with
spiritual songs."

A little shiver of anticipation ran down the benches of the great
hall, and the nuns fell to whispering.

"Take care, Sir Manciple, that he be not some light juggler, a singer
of vain songs, a mocker. I would not have these quiet halls disturbed
by wanton music and unholy words. God forbid." And she crossed
herself.

"Madam, I will answer for it."

The Manciple bowed himself from the dais and went down the middle of
the hall, his keys rattling at his belt. A little buzz of conversation
rose from the sisters and went up to the oak roof-trees, like the
singing of bees. The Abbess told her beads.

The hall door opened and in came the pilgrim. God knows what manner of
man he was; I cannot tell you. He certainly was lean and lithe like a
cat, his eyes danced in his head like the very devil, but his cheeks
and jaws were as bare of flesh as any hermit's that lives on roots and
ditchwater. His yellow-hosed legs went like the tune of a May game,
and he screwed and twisted his scarlet-jerkined body in time with
them. In his left hand he held a cithern, on which he twanged with his
right, making a cunning noise that titillated the back-bones of those
who heard it, and teased every delicate nerve in the body. Such a tune
would have tickled the ribs of Death himself. A queer fellow to go
pilgrimaging certainly, but why, when they saw him, all the young nuns
tittered and the old nuns grinned, until they showed their red gums,
it is hard to tell. Even the Lady Mother on the dais smiled, though
she tried to frown a moment later.

The pilgrim stepped lightly up to the dais, the infernal devil in his
legs making the nuns think of the games the village