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.
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