and short life. Your life was saved by canary."
"Indeed, reverend father," said Sir Ralph, "if the young

lady be half what you describe, she must be a paragon:
but your commending her for valour does somewhat amaze me."

"She can fence," said the little friar, "and draw the long bow,
and play at singlestick and quarter-staff."

"Yet mark you," said brother Michael, "not like a virago or a hoyden,
or one that would crack a serving-man's head for spilling gravy on her ruff,

but with such womanly grace and temperate" target="_blank" title="a.有节制的；温和的">temperate self-command as if those manly
exercises belonged to her only, and were become for her sake feminine."

"You incite me," said Sir Ralph, "to view her more nearly.
That madcap earl found me other employment than to remark her

in the chapel."
"The earl is a worthy peer," said brother Michael; "he is worth

any fourteen earls on this side Trent, and any seven on the other."
(The reader will please to remember that Rubygill Abbey was

north of Trent.)
"His mettle will be tried," said Sir Ralph. "There is many a courtier

will swear to King Henry to bring him in dead or alive."
"They must look to the brambles then," said brother Michael.

"The bramble, the bramble, the bonny forest bramble,
Doth make a jest

Of silken vest,
That will through greenwood scramble:

The bramble, the bramble, the bonny forest bramble."
"Plague on your lungs, son Michael," said the abbot; "this is your old coil:

always roaring in your cups."
"I know what I say," said brother Michael; "there is often more sense

in an old song than in a new homily.
The courtly pad doth amble,

When his gay lord would ramble:
But both may catch

An awkward scratch,
If they ride among the bramble:

The bramble, the bramble, the bonny forest bramble."
"Tall friar," said Sir Ralph, "either you shoot the shafts of your merriment

at random, or you know more of the earl's designs than beseems your frock."
"Let my frock," said brother Michael, "answer for its own sins.

It is worn past covering mine. It is too weak for a shield,
too transparent for a screen, too thin for a shelter,

too light for gravity, and too threadbare for a jest.
The wearer would be naught indeed who should misbeseem such

a wedding garment.
But wherefore does the sheep wear wool?

That he in season sheared may be,
And the shepherd be warm though his flock be cool:

So I'll have a new cloak about me."
CHAPTER II

Vray moyne si oncques en feut depuis que le monde moynant moyna
de moynerie.--RABELAIS.

The Earl of Huntingdon, living in the vicinity of a royal forest,
and passionately attached to the chase from his infancy,

had long made as free with the king's deer as Lord Percy
proposed to do with those of Lord Douglas in the memorable

hunting of Cheviot. It is sufficiently well known how severe
were the forest-laws in those days, and with what jealousy

the kings of England maintained this branch of their prerogative;
but menaces and remonstrances were thrown away on the earl,

who declared that he would not thank Saint Peter for admission
into Paradise, if he were obliged to leave his bow and hounds

at the gate. King Henry (the Second) swore by Saint Botolph
to make him rue his sport, and, having caused him to be duly

and formally accused, summoned him to London to answer the charge.
The earl, deeming himself safer among his own vassals than

among king Henry's courtiers, took no notice of the mandate.
King Henry sent a force to bring him, vi et armis, to court.

The earl made a resoluteresistance, and put the king's force
to flight under a shower of arrows: an act which the courtiers

declared to be treason. At the same time, the abbot of Doncaster
sued up the payment of certain moneys, which the earl,

whose revenue ran a losing race with his hospitality,
had borrowed at sundry times of the said abbot: for the abbots

and the bishops were the chief usurers of those days, and,
as the end sanctifies the means, were not in the least scrupulous

of employing what would have been extortion in the profane,
to accomplish the pious purpose of bringing a blessing on the land

by rescuing it from the frail hold of carnal and temporal
into the firmer grasp of ghostly and spiritual possessors.

But the earl, confident in the number and attachment of
his retainers, stoutly refused either to repay the money,

which he could not, or to yield the forfeiture, which he would not:
a refusal which in those days was an act of outlawry in a gentleman,

as it is now of bankruptcy in a base mechanic; the gentleman
having in our wiser times a more liberalprivilege of gentility,

which enables him to keep his land and laugh at his creditor.
Thus the mutual resentments and interests of the king and the abbot

concurred to subject the earl to the penalties of outlawry,
by which the abbot would gain his due upon the lands

of Locksley, and the rest would be confiscate to the king.
Still the king did not think it advisable to assail the earl

in his own strong-hold, but caused a diligent watch
to be kept over his motions, till at length his rumoured

marriage with the heiress of Arlingford seemed to point
out an easy method of laying violent hands on the offender.

Sir Ralph Montfaucon, a young man of good lineage and of an
aspiring temper, who readily seized the first opportunity

that offered of recommending himself to King Henry's favour
by manifesting his zeal in his service, undertake的过去式">undertook the charge:

and how he succeeded we have seen.
Sir Ralph's curiosity was strongly excited by the friar's description

of the young lady of Arlingford; and he prepared in the morning
to visit the castle, under the very plausible pretext of giving

the baron an explanation of his intervention at the nuptials.
Brother Michael and the little fat friar proposed to be his guides.

The proposal was courteously accepted, and they set out together,
leaving Sir Ralph's followers at the abbey. The knight was mounted

on a spirited charger; brother Michael on a large heavy-trotting horse;
and the little fat friar on a plump soft-paced galloway,

so correspondent with himself in size, rotundity, and sleekness,
that if they had been amalgamated into a centaur, there would

have been nothing to alter in their proportions.
"Do you know," said the little friar, as they wound along the banks

of the stream, "the reason why lake-trout is better than river-trout,
and shyer withal?"

"I was not aware of the fact," said Sir Ralph.
"A most heterodox remark," said brother Michael: "know you not,

that in all nice matters you should take the implication for absolute,
and, without looking into the FACT WHETHER, seek only the reason why?

But the fact is so, on the word of a friar; which what layman will venture
to gainsay who prefers a down bed to a gridiron?"

"The fact being so," said the knight, "I am still at a loss for the reason;
nor would I undertake to opine in a matter of that magnitude: since, in all

that appertains to the good things either of this world or the next,
my reverendspiritual guides are kind enough to take the trouble of thinking

off my hands."
"Spoken," said brother Michael, "with a sound Catholic conscience.

My little brother here is most profound in the matter of trout.
He has marked, learned, and inwardly" target="_blank" title="ad.内向；独自地">inwardly digested the subject, twice a

week at least for five-and-thirty years. I yield to him in this.
My strong points are venison and canary."

"The good qualities of a trout," said the little friar,
"are firmness and redness: the redness, indeed, being the visible

sign of all other virtues."
"Whence," said brother Michael, "we choose our abbot by his nose: