"By no means," said the friar. "She has certainly a high spirit;

but it is the wing of the eagle, without his beak or his claw.
She is as gentle as magnanimous; but it is the gentleness of the

summer wind, which, however lightly it wave the tuft of the pine,
carries with it the intimation of a power, that, if roused

to its extremity, could make it bend to the dust."
"From the warmth of your panegyric, ghostly father," said the knight,

"I should almost suspect you were in love with the damsel."
"So I am," said the friar, "and I care not who knows it;

but all in the way of honesty, master soldier. I am,
as it were, her spiritual lover; and were she a damsel errant,

I would be her ghostlyesquire, her friar militant.
I would buckle me in armour of proof, and the devil might thresh me

black with an iron flail, before I would knock under in her cause.
Though they be not yet one canonically, thanks to your soldiership,

the earl is her liege lord, and she is his liege lady.
I am her father confessor and ghostly director:

I have taken on me to show her the way to the next world;
and how can I do that if I lose sight of her in this? seeing

that this is but the road to the other, and has so many
circumvolutions and ramifications of byeways and beaten paths

(all more thickly set than the true one with finger-posts
and milestones, not one of which tells truth), that a traveller

has need of some one who knows the way, or the odds go hard
against him that he will ever see the face of Saint Peter."

"But there must surely be some reason," said Sir Ralph,
"for father Peter's apprehension."

"None," said brother Michael, "but the apprehension itself; fear being
its own father, and most prolific in self-propagation. The lady did,

it is true, once signalize her displeasure against our little brother,
for reprimanding her in that she would go hunting a-mornings instead

of attending matins. She cut short the thread of his eloquence by
sportively drawing her bow-string and loosing an arrow over his head;

he waddled off with singular speed, and was in much awe of her for
many months. I thought he had forgotten it: but let that pass.

In truth, she would have had little of her lover's company, if she had
liked the chaunt of the choristers better than the cry of the hounds:

yet I know not; for they were companions from the cradle, and reciprocally
fashioned each other to the love of the fern and the foxglove.

Had either been less sylvan, the other might have been more saintly;
but they will now never hear matins but those of the lark,

nor reverence vaulted aisle but that of the greenwood canopy.
They are twin plants of the forest, and are identified with its growth.

For the slender beech and the sapling oak,
That grow by the shadowy rill,

You may cut down both at a single stroke,
You may cut down which you will.

But this you must know, that as long as they grow
Whatever change may be,

You never can teach either oak or beech
To be aught but a greenwood tree."

CHAPTER III
Inflamed wrath in glowing breast.--BUTLER.

The knight and the friar arriving at Arlingford Castle,
and leaving their horses in the care of lady Matilda's groom,

with whom the friar was in great favour, were ushered
into a statelyapartment, where they found the baron alone,

flourishing an enormous carving-knife over a brother baron--of beef--
with as much vehemence of action as if he were cutting down an enemy.

The baron was a gentleman of a fierce and choleric temperament:
he was lineally descended from the redoubtable Fierabras

of Normandy, who came over to England with the Conqueror,
and who, in the battle of Hastings, killed with his own

hand four-and-twenty Saxon cavaliers all on a row.
The very excess of the baron's internal rage on the preceding day

had smothered its externalmanifestation: he was so equally angry
with both parties, that he knew not on which to vent his wrath.

He was enraged with the earl for having brought himself into
such a dilemma without his privily; and he was no less enraged

with the king's men for their very unseasonable intrusion.
He could willingly have fallen upon both parties, but, he must

necessarily have begun with one; and he felt that on whichever
side he should strike the first blow, his retainers would

immediately join battle. He had thereforecontented himself
with forcing away his daughter from the scene of action.

In the course of the evening he had received intelligence that
the earl's castle was in possession of a party of the king's men,

who had been detached by Sir Ralph Montfaucon to seize on it during
the earl's absence. The baron inferred from this that the earl's

case was desperate; and those who have had the opportunity
of seeing a rich friend fall suddenly into poverty, may easily

judge by their own feelings how quickly and completely the whole
moral being of the earl was changed in the baron's estimation.

The baron immediately proceeded to require in his daughter's mind
the same summary revolution that had taken place in his own,

and considered himself exceedingly ill-used by her non-compliance.
The lady had retired to her chamber, and the baron had passed

a supperless and sleepless night, stalking about his apartments
till an advanced hour of the morning, when hunger compelled

him to summon into his presence the spoils of the buttery,
which, being the intended array of an uneaten wedding feast,

were more than usually abundant, and on which, when the knight
and the friar entered, he was falling with desperate valour.

He looked up at them fiercely, with his mouth full of beef
and his eyes full of flame, and rising, as ceremony required,

made an awful bow to the knight, inclining himself forward
over the table and presenting his carving-knife en militaire,

in a manner that seemed to leave it doubtful whether he meant
to show respect to his visitor, or to defend his provision:

but the doubt was soon cleared up by his politely motioning
the knight to be seated; on which the friar advanced to the table,

saying, "For what we are going to receive," and commenced operations
without further prelude by filling and drinking a goblet of wine.

The baron at the same time offered one to Sir Ralph,
with the look of a man in whom habitualhospitality and courtesy

were struggling with the ebullitions of natural anger.
They pledged each other in silence, and the baron, having completed

a copiousdraught, continued working his lips and his throat,
as if trying to swallow his wrath as he had done his wine.

Sir Ralph, not knowing well what to make of these ambiguous signs,
looked for instructions to the friar, who by significant

looks and gestures seemed to advise him to follow his example
and partake of the good cheer before him, without speaking

till the baron should be more intelligible in his demeanour.
The knight and the friar, accordingly, proceeded to refect

themselves after their ride; the baron looking first at the one
and then at the other, scrutinising alternately the serious looks

of the knight and the merry face of the friar, till at length,
having calmed himself sufficiently to speak, he said,

"Courteous knight and ghostly father, I presume you have some
other business with me than to eat my beef and drink my canary;

and if so, I patiently await your leisure to enter on the topic."
"Lord Fitzwater," said Sir Ralph, "in obedience to my royal master,

King Henry, I have been the unwillinginstrument of frustrating
the intended nuptials of your fair daughter; yet will you, I trust,

owe me no displeasure for my agencyherein, seeing that the noble
maiden might otherwise by this time have been the bride of an outlaw."

"I am very much obliged to you, sir," said the baron;
"very exceedingly obliged. Your solicitude for my daughter is

truly paternal, and for a young man and a stranger very singular
and exemplary: and it is very kind withal to come to the relief

of my insufficiency and inexperience, and concern yourself
so much in that which concerns you not."

"You misconceive the knight, noble baron," said the friar.
"He urges not his reason in the shape of a preconceived intent,

but in that of a subsequent extenuation. True, he has done
the lady Matilda great wrong----"