“And ho! ho!” said the friar,—“bold baron, old baron, sturdy baron, wordy baron, long baron, strong baron, mighty baron, flighty baron, mazed baron, crazed baron, hacked baron, thwacked baron; cracked, cracked, cracked baron; bone-cracked, sconce-cracked, brain-cracked baron!”
“What do you mean,” said the baron, “bully friar, by calling me hacked and thwacked?”
“Were you not in the wars?” said the friar, “where he who escapes untracked does more credit to his heels than his arms. I pay tribute to your valour in calling you hacked and thwacked.”
“I never was thwacked in my life,” said the baron; “I stood my ground manfully, and covered my body with my sword. If I had had the luck to meet with a fighting friar indeed, I might have been thwacked, and soundly too; but I hold myself a match for any two laymen; it takes nine fighting laymen to make a fighting friar.”
“Whence come you now, holy father?” asked Matilda.
“From Rubygill Abbey,” said the friar, “whither I never return:
For I must seek some hermit cell,
Where I alone my beads may tell,
And on the wight who that way fares
Levy a toll for my ghostly pray’rs,
Levy a toll, levy a toll,
Levy a toll for my ghostly pray’rs.”
“What is the matter then, father?” said Matilda.
“This is the matter,” said the friar: “my holy brethren have held a chapter on me, and sentenced me to seven years’ privation of wine. I therefore deemed it fitting to take my departure, which they would fain have prohibited. I was enforced to clear the way with my staff. I have grievously beaten my dearly beloved brethren: I grieve thereat; but they enforced me thereto. I have beaten them much; I mowed them down to the right and to the left, and left them like an ill-reaped field of wheat, ear and straw pointing all ways, scattered in singleness and jumbled in masses; and so bade them farewell, saying, Peace be with you. But I must not tarry, lest danger be in my rear: therefore, farewell, sweet Matilda; and farewell, noble baron; and farewell, sweet Matilda again, the alpha and omega of father Michael, the first and the last.”
“Farewell, father,” said the baron, a little softened; “and God send you be never assailed by more than fifty men at a time.”