have a heavier miss of him than he will have of the law. He will strike as much venison as ever, and more of other game. I know what I say: but basta: Let us drink.”
“What other game?” said the little friar. “I hope he won’t poach among our partridges.”
“Poach! not he,” said brother Michael: “if he wants your partridges, he will strike them under your nose (here’s to you), and drag your trout-stream for you on a Thursday evening.”
“Monstrous! and starve us on fast-day,” said the little friar.
“But that is not the game I mean,” said brother Michael.
“Surely, son Michael,” said the abbot, “you do not mean to insinuate that the noble earl will turn freebooter?”
“A man must live,” said brother Michael, “earl or no. If the law takes his rents and beeves without his consent, he must take beeves and rents where he can get them without the consent of the law. This is the lex talionis.”
“Truly,” said Sir Ralph, “I am sorry for the damsel: she seems fond of this wild runagate.”
“A mad girl, a mad girl,” said the little friar.
“How a mad girl?” said brother Michael. “Has she not beauty, grace, wit, sense, discretion, dexterity, learning, and valour?”
“Learning!” exclaimed the little friar; “what has a woman to do with learning? And valour! who ever heard a woman commended for valour? Meekness and mildness, and softness, and gentleness, and tenderness, and humility, and obedience to her husband, and faith in her confessor, and domesticity, or, as learned doctors call it, the faculty of stayathomeitiveness, and embroidery, and music, and pickling, and preserving, and the whole complex and multiplex detail of the noble science of dinner, as well in preparation for the table, as in arrangement over it, and in distribution around it to knights, and squires, and ghostly friars,—these are female virtues: but valour—why who ever heard——?”
“She is the all in all,” said brother Michael, “gentle as a ring-dove, yet high-soaring as a falcon: humble below her deserving, yet deserving beyond
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