"You should offer up your anger too, to make this gift acceptable," returned the priest. "Let thy dedication be with a cleansed heart."
"Ha, father Pierre," said the Skipper, jocularly; "my conscience does easily cast off a burden: so it shall be as you command. I did not tell you that whilst my brigantine lay in the Helder, I made a land flight to Louvaine, where a certain Abbot of Andoyne,—a pious, somewhat aged, and, thanks to a wholesome refectory! a good jolly priest,—hearing I came from the province, must needs send for me to ask if I knew father Pierre de la Maise, and upon my answer, that I did right well, he begs me to bring his remembrance back to you."
"I knew father Gervase," replied the priest with a countenance full of benignity—"some forty years ago, when he was a reader in the Chair of St. Isidore at Rome. He remembers me?—a blessing on his head!—and he wears well, Master Skipper?"
"Quite as well as yourself," replied Cocklescraft. "Father, a cup of your cool water, and I will depart," he said, as he helped himself to the draught. "I will take heed to what you have said touching the royal order—and by St. Iago, I will be a friend in need to the Collector. Master Verheyden shall not be a better one. Now fare thee well, father. Peregrine Cadger shall have order to cut you off a cassock from the best cloth I have brought him, and little Abbot the tailor shall put it in fashion for you."
"You are lavish of your bounties, son," replied the priest, taking Cocklescraft by both hands as he was now about to withdraw. "You have a poor churchman's thanks. It gives me comfort to be so considered, and I prize your kindness more than the cassock. A blessing on thy ways, Master Cocklescraft!"
The Skipper once more set forth on his way towards the port; and with a temper somewhat allayed by the acting of the scene I have just described, though with no abatement of the resentment which rankled at the bottom of his heart, even under the smiling face and gay outside which he could assume with the skill of a consummate dissembler, he soon reached the Crow and Archer. From thence he meditated, as soon as his occasions would permit, a visit to the Cripple of St. Jerome's.
CHAPTER XVI.
"Who be these, sir?"
"Fellows to mount a bank. Did your instructer
In the dear tongues never discourse to you