the estimate of panegyric: an exact economist in all superfluity, yet a most bountiful dispenser in all liberality: the chief regulator of her household, the fairest pillar of her hall, and the sweetest blossom of her bower: having, in all opposite proposings, sense to understand, judgment to weigh, discretion to choose, firmness to undertake, diligence to conduct, perseverance to accomplish, and resolution to maintain. For obedience to her husband, that is not to be tried till she has one: for faith in her confessor, she has as much as the law prescribes: for embroidery an Arachne: for music a Siren: and for pickling and preserving,       did not one of her jars of sugared apricots give you your last surfeit at Arlingford Castle?”      

       “Call you that preserving?” said the little friar; “I call it destroying. Call you it pickling? Truly it pickled me. My life was saved by miracle.”      

       “By canary,” said brother Michael. “Canary is the only life preserver, the true aurum potabile, the universal panacea for all diseases, thirst, and short life. Your life was saved by canary.”      

       “Indeed, reverend father,” said Sir Ralph, “if the young lady be half what you describe, she must be a paragon: but your commending her for valour does somewhat amaze me.”      

       “She can fence,” said the little friar, “and draw the long bow, and play at singlestick and quarter-staff.”      

       “Yet mark you,” said brother Michael, “not like a virago or a hoyden, or one that would crack a serving-man’s head for spilling gravy on her ruff, but with such womanly grace and temperate self-command as if those manly exercises belonged to her only, and were become for her sake feminine.”      

       “You incite me,” said Sir Ralph, “to view her more nearly. That madcap earl found me other employment than to remark her in the chapel.”      

       “The earl is a worthy peer,” said brother Michael; “he is worth any fourteen earls on this side Trent, and any seven on the other.” (The reader will please to remember that Rubygill Abbey was north of Trent.)     

       “His mettle will be tried,” said Sir Ralph. “There is many a courtier will swear to King Henry to bring him in dead or alive.”      

       “They must 

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