"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 implica tion 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 reverend spiritual 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. 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."

66

are

"The good qualities of a trout," said the little friar, firmness and redness, redness, indeed, being the visible sign of all other virtues."

66

"Whence," said Brother Michael, "we choose our abbot by his nose:

"The rose on the nose does all virtues disclose :

For the outward grace shows

That the inward o'erflows

When it glows in the rose of a red, red nose.

"Now," said the little friar, "as is the firmness, so is the redness, and as is the redness, so is the shyness."

"Marry why?" said Brother Michael. "The solution is not physical-natural, but physical-historical, or natural superinductive. And thereby hangs a tale, which may be either said or sung:

"The damsel stood to watch the fight

By the banks of Kingslea Mere,

And they brought to her feet her own true knight
Sore wounded on a bier.

"She knelt by him his wounds to bind,
She washed them with many a tear;
And shouts rose fast upon the wind,
Which told that the foe was near.

"Oh! let not,' he said, 'while yet I live,
The cruel foe me take:

But with thy sweet lips a last kiss give,
And cast me in the lake.'

"Around his neck she wound her arms,
And she kissed his lips so pale :
And evermore the war's alarms
Came louder up the vale.

"She drew him to the lake's steep side,
Where the red heath fringed the shore;
She plunged with him beneath the tide,
And they were seen no more.

"Their true blood mingled in Kingslea Mere,
That to mingle on earth was fain:

And the trout that swims in the crystal clear
Is tinged with the crimson stain.

"Thus, you see how good comes of evil, and how a holy friar may fare better on fast-day for the violent death of two lovers two hundred years ago. The inference is most conse

cutive, that wherever you catch a red-fleshed trout, love lies bleeding under the water: an occult quality, which can only act in the stationary waters of a lake, being neutralized by the rapid transition of those of a stream."

"And why is the trout shyer for that?" asked Sir Ralph. "Do you not see?" said Brother Michael. "The virtues of both lovers diffuse themselves through the lake. The infusion of masculine valour makes the fish active and sanguineous the infusion of maiden modesty makes him coy and hard to win: and you shall find through life, the fish which is most easily hooked is not the best worth dishing. But yonder are the towers of Arlingford."

The little friar stopped. He seemed suddenly struck with an awful thought, which caused a momentary palescence in his rosy complexion; and after a brief hesitation, he turned his galloway, and told his companions he should bid them good-day.

66

"Why, what is in the wind now, Brother Peter?" said Friar Michael.

"The Lady Matilda," said the little friar, " can draw the long-bow. She must bear no goodwill to Sir Ralph; and if she should espy him from her tower, she may testify her recognition with cloth-yard shaft. She is not so infallible a markswoman, but that she might shoot at a crow, and kill a

pigeon. She might peradventure miss the knight, and hit me, who never did her any harm.'

"Tut, tut, man," said Brother Michael, "there is no such fear."

"Mass," said the little friar, "but there is such a fear, and very strong too. You who have it not may keep your way, and I who have it shall take mine. I am not just now in the vein for being picked off at a long shot." And saying these words, he spurred up his four-footed better-half, and galloped off as nimbly as if he heard an arrow singing behind him.

"Is this Lady Matilda, then, so very terrible a damsel?" said Sir Ralph to Brother Michael. "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 ghostly esquire, 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 by-ways 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."

1

None," said Brother Michael, "but the apprehension itself; fear being its own father, and most prolific in selfpropagation. 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 tender 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."

THE

CHAPTER III.

Inflamed wrath in glowing breast.—BUTLER.

HE knight and the friar arrived 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 stately apartment, where they found the baron alone, flourishing an enormous carving-knive 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 Fireabras 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 external manifestation: 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 privity; and he was no less enraged with the king's men for their very unseasonable intrusion. He could willingly have fallen on 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 therefore contented 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