“Which we cannot do,” said Brand, looking at the well-mailed and armed lad, “without calling in half a dozen of our men-at-arms.”
“In which case there would be blood shed, and scandal made in the holy precincts.”
“And nothing gained; for yield he would not till he was killed outright, which God forbid!”
“Amen. And if he stay here, he may be persuaded to repentance.”
“And restitution.”
“As for that,” quoth Hereward (who had remounted his horse from prudential motives, and set him athwart the gateway, so that there was no chance of the doors being slammed behind him), “if either of you will lend me sixteen pence, I will pay it back to you and St. Peter before I die, with interest enough to satisfy any Jew, on the word of a gentleman and an earl’s son.”
The Abbot burst again into a great laughter. “Come in, thou graceless renegade, and we will see to thee and thy horse; and I will pray to St. Peter; and I doubt not he will have patience with thee, for he is very merciful; and after all, thy parents have been exceeding good to us, and the righteousness of the father, like his sins, is sometimes visited on the children.”
Now, why were the two ecclesiastics so uncanonically kind to this wicked youth?
Perhaps because both the old bachelors were wishing from their hearts that they had just such a son of their own. And beside, Earl Leofric was a very great man indeed; and the wind might change; for it is an unstable world.
“Only, mind, one thing,” said the naughty boy, as he dismounted, and halloed to a lay-brother to see to his horse,—“don’t let me see the face of that Herluin.”