All stood silent, though doubtless there were several disappointed and surprised at receiving chiding instead of thanks from so zealous a protestant.
The dragon, indeed, did at length take upon him to be spokesman, and growled from the depth of his painted maw, that they did but sweep Popery out of the church with the besom of destruction.
“What! my friends,” replied Sir Halbert Glendinning, “think you this mumming and masking has not more of Popery in it than have these stone walls? Take the leprosy out of your flesh, before you speak of purifying stone walls—abate your insolent license, which leads but to idle vanity and sinful excess; and know, that what you now practise, is one of the profane and unseemly sports introduced by the priests of Rome themselves, to mislead and to brutify the souls which fell into their net.”
“Marry come up—are you there with your bears?” muttered the dragon, with a draconic sullenness, which was in good keeping with his character, “we had as good have been Romans still, if we are to have no freedom in our pastimes!”
“Dost thou reply to me so?” said Halbert Glendinning; “or is there any pastime in grovelling on the ground there like a gigantic kail-worm?—Get out of thy painted case, or, by my knighthood, I will treat you like the beast and reptile you have made yourself.”
“Beast and reptile?” retorted the offended dragon, “setting aside your knighthood, I hold myself as well a born man as thyself.”
The Knight made no answer in words, but bestowed two such blows with the butt of his lance on the petulant dragon, that had not the hoops which constituted the ribs of the machine been pretty strong, they would hardly have saved those of the actor from being broken. In all haste the masker crept out of his disguise, unwilling to abide a third buffet from the lance of the enraged Knight. And when the ex-dragon stood on the floor of the church, he presented to Halbert Glendinning the well-known countenance of Dan of the Howlet-hirst, an ancient comrade of his own, ere fate had raised him so high above the rank to which he was born. The clown looked sulkily upon the Knight, as if to upbraid him for his violence towards an old acquaintance, and Glendinning's own good-nature reproached him for the violence he had acted upon him.
“I did wrong to strike thee,” he said, “Dan; but in truth, I knew thee not—thou wert ever a mad fellow—come to Avenel Castle, and we shall see how my hawks fly.”
“And if we show him not falcons that will mount as merrily as rockets,” said the Abbot of Unreason, “I would your honour laid as hard on my bones as you did on his even now.”
“How now, Sir Knave,” said the Knight, “and what has brought you hither?”