Walled Townes, stored Arcenalls and Armouries, Goodly Races of Horse, Chariots of Warre, Elephants, Ordnance, Artillery, and the like: All this is but a Sheep in a Lion's Skin, except the Breed and disposition be stout and warlike. Nay, Number it selfe in Armies importeth not much where the People is of weake courage: For (as Virgil saith) It never troubles a Wolfe, how many the sheepe be."—BACON.
For the rest of the day my father shut himself in his room, while my uncle spent the most of it seated on the brewhouse steps in a shaded corner of the back court, through which the monks brought in their furniture and returned to the ship for more. The bundles they carried were prodigious, and all the morning they worked without halt or rest, ascending and descending the hill in single file and always at equal distances one behind another. Watching from the terrace down the slope of the park as they came and went, you might have taken them for a company of ants moving camp. But my uncle never wholly recovered from the shock of their first freight, to see man by man cross the court with a stout coffin on his back and above each coffin a pack of straw: nor was he content with Fra Basilio's explanation that the brethren slept in these coffins by rule and saved the expense of beds.
"For my part," said my uncle, "considering the numbers that manage it, I should have thought death no such dexterity as to need practice."
"Yet bethink you, sir, of St. Paul's words. 'I protest,' said he,
'I die daily.'"
"Why, yes, sir, and so do we all," agreed my uncle, and fell silent, though on the very point, as it seemed, of continuing the argument. "I did not choose to be discourteous, lad," he explained to me later: "but I had a mind to tell him that we do daily a score of things we don't brag about—of which I might have added that washing is one: and I believe 'twould have been news to him."
I had never known my uncle in so rough a temper. Poor man! I believe that all the time he sat there on the brewhouse steps, he was calculating woefully the cost of these visitors; and it hurt him the worse because he had a native disposition to be hospitable.
"But who is this lady that signs herself Emilia?" I asked.
"A crowned queen, lad, and the noblest lady in the world—you heard your father say it. This evening he may choose to tell us some further particulars."
"Why this evening?" I asked, and then suddenly remembered that to-day was the 15th of July and St. Swithun's feast; that my father would not fail to drink wine after dinner in the little temple below the deer-park; and that he had promised to admit me to-night to make the fourth in St. Swithun's brotherhood.
He appeared at dinner-time, punctual and dressed with more than his usual care (I noted that he wore his finest lace ruffles); and before going in to dinner we were joined by the Vicar, much perturbed—as his manner showed—by the news of a sudden descent of papists upon his parish. Indeed the good man so bubbled with it that we had scarcely taken our seats before the stream of questions overflowed. "Who were these men?" "How many!" "Whence had they come, and why?" etc.