“Where do the brethren chiefly work for God?”
“In the noisome lazar houses, amongst the lepers, in the shambles of Newgate, here on the swamps between the walls and the Thames, where men live and suffer. We do not enter the brotherhood to build grand buildings. We sleep on bare pallets without pillows.”
“Why without pillows?” asked Martin, wondering.
“We need no little mountains to lift our heads to heaven. None but the sick go shod.”
“Is it not dangerous to health to go without shoes in the winter?”
“God protects us,” said the master, smiling sweetly. “One of our friars found a pair of shoes last winter on a frosty morning, and wore them to matins. At night he had a dream. He dreamt that he was travelling on the work of God, and that at a dangerous pass in the forest of the Cotswolds, robbers leapt out upon him, crying, ‘Kill, kill.’
“‘I am a friar,’ he shrieked.
“‘You lie,’ they replied, ‘for you go shod.’
“He awoke and threw the shoes out of the window.”
“And did he catch cold afterwards?”