“I cannot forever take keep of mine own soul, brother, when there be so many other in peril to be thought on. Wilt thou that I hide my head in monastery and sing plain-song, and watch perpetual at the altar lest the lamp go out; and, all the while, without the gate, the poor till the fields that I may have leisure to pray? The poor likewise be anhungered after truth. They cry, 'Wherefore did God make us to be starved of the fat prelates!'”
“So did thy father rail in years gone by,” answered the monk, “and Master John Wyclif would have more preaching. But monasteries are holy; they are ordained of God and the—the Pope. They shall endure.”
“Brother, what wilt thou do, thou and thy monastery, when the villeins all are free, when they need no longer grind at the abbot's mill, nor plough the abbey's fields, nay, nor even pay quit-rent to rid them of service?”
“Free!” cried Brother Owyn, “and who shall set them free?”
“Themselves, and Piers Ploughman, and Christ the King's Son of Heaven, which cureth all ills by love.”
The old man drew away from her: “Surely, thou hast a devil,” he said.
“Then an thou lov'st me, call it forth,” quoth she; and smiled, and spread her arms wide, waiting.
But he cried, “Woe, woe!” and cast up his hands to heaven; and after, “Lord, I 'm content my daughter died at two years old.”
“Had she lived, she might have saved souls other than her own.”
“She hath saved mine, mine most sinful,” the monk interrupted her sternly; “and dost thou think I 'll lose it now to thee? Get thee gone, with thy strange beliefs and blasphemies!”