Now, by Our Lady, Sheriff,’tis hard reckoning,

That I, with every odds of birth and barony

Should be detain’d here for the casual death

Of a wild forester, whose utmost having

Is but the brazen buckle of the belt

In which he sticks his hedge-knife.

Old play.

While Edward was making preparations for securing and punishing the supposed murderer of his brother, with an intense thirst for vengeance, which had not hitherto shown itself as part of his character, Sir Piercie Shafton made such communications as it pleased him to the Sub-Prior, who listened with great attention, though the knight’s narrative was none of the clearest, especially as his self-conceit led him to conceal or abridge the details which were necessary to render it intelligible.

“You are to know,” he said, “reverend father, that this rustical juvenal having chosen to offer me, in the presence of your venerable Superior, yourself, and other excellent and worthy persons, besides the damsel, Mary Avenel, whom I term my Discretion in all honour and kindness, a gross insult, rendered yet more intolerable by the time and place, my just resentment did so gain the mastery over my discretion, that I resolved to allow him the privileges of an equal, and to indulge him with the combat.”

“But, Sir Knight,” said the Sub-Prior, “you still leave two matters very obscure. First, why the token he presented to you gave you so much offence, as I with others witnessed; and then again, how the youth, whom you then met for the first, or, at least, the second time, knew so much of your history as enabled him so greatly to move you.”

The knight coloured very deeply.

“For your first query,” he said, “most reverend father, we will, if you please, pretermit it as nothing essential to the matter in hand; and for the second — I protest to you that I know as little of his means of knowledge as you do, and that I am well-nigh persuaded he deals with Sathanas, of which more anon. — Well, sir — In the evening, I failed not to veil my purpose with a pleasant brow, as is the custom amongst us martialists, who never display the bloody colours of defiance in our countenance until our hand is armed to fight under them. I amused the fair Discretion with some canzonettes, and other toys, which could not but be ravishing to her inexperienced ears. I arose in the morning, and met my antagonist, who, to say truth, for an inexperienced villagio, comported himself as stoutly as I could have desired. — So, coming to the encounter, reverend sir, I did try his mettle with some half-a-dozen of downright passes, with any one of which I could have been through his body, only that I was loth to take so fatal an advantage, but rather, mixing mercy with my just indignation, studied to inflict upon him some flesh-wound of no very fatal quality. But, sir, in the midst of my clemency, he, being instigated, I think, by the devil, did follow up his first offence with some insult of the same nature. Whereupon, being eager to punish him, I made an estramazone, and my foot slipping at the same time — not from any fault of fence on my part, or any advantage of skill on his, but the devil having, as I said, taken up the matter in hand, and the grass being slippery — ere I recovered my position I encountered his sword, which he had advanced, with my undefended person, so that, as I think, I was in some sort run through the body. My juvenal, being beyond measure appalled at his own unexpected and unmerited success in this strange encounter, takes the flight and leaves me there, and I fall into a dead swoon for the lack of the blood I had lost so foolishly — and when I awake, as from a sound sleep, I find myself lying, an it like you, wrapt up in my cloak at the foot of one of the birch-trees which stand together in a clump near to this place. I feel my limbs, and experience little pain, but much weakness — I put my hand to the wound — it was whole and skinned over as you now see it — I rise and come hither; and in these words you have my whole day’s story.”

“I can only reply to so strange a tale,” answered the monk, “that it is scarce possible that Sir Piercie Shafton can expect me to credit it. Here is a quarrel, the cause of which you conceal — a wound received in the morning, of which there is no recent appearance at sunset — a grave filled up, in which no body is deposited — the vanquished found alive and well — the victor departed no man knows whither. These things, Sir Knight, hang not so well together, that I should receive them as gospel.”

“Reverend father,” answered Sir Piercie Shafton, “I pray you in the first place to observe, that if I offer peaceful and civil justification of that which I have already averred to be true, I do so only in devout deference to your dress and to your order, protesting, that to any other opposite, saving a man of religion, a lady or my liege prince, I would not deign to support that which I had once attested, otherwise than with the point of my good sword. And so much being premised, I have to add, that I can but gage my honour as a gentleman, and my faith as a Catholic Christian, that the things which I have described to you have happened to me as I have described them, and not otherwise.”

“It is a deep assertion, Sir Knight,” answered the Sub-Prior; “yet, bethink you, it is only an assertion, and that no reason can be alleged why things should be believed which are so contrary to reason. Let me pray you to say whether the grave, which has been seen at your place of combat, was open or closed when your encounter took place?”

“Reverend father,” said the knight, “I will veil from you nothing, but show you each secret of my bosom; even as the pure fountain revealeth the smallest pebble which graces the sand at the bottom of its crystal mirror, and as —”

“Speak in plain terms, for the love of heaven!” said the monk; “these holiday phrases belong not to solemn affairs — Was the grave open when the conflict began?”

“It was,” answered the knight, “I acknowledge it; even as he that acknowledgeth —”

“Nay, I pray you, fair son, forbear these similitudes, and observe me. On yesterday at even no grave was found in that place, for old Martin chanced, contrary to his wont, to go thither in quest of a strayed sheep. At break of day, by your own confession, a grave was opened in that spot, and there a combat was fought — only one of the combatants appears, and he is covered with blood, and to all appearance woundless.”— Here the knight made a gesture of impatience. —“Nay, fair son, hear me but one moment — the grave is closed and covered by the sod — what can we believe, but that it conceals the bloody corpse of the fallen duellist?”

“By Heaven, it cannot!” said the knight, “unless the juvenal hath slain himself and buried himself, in order to place me in the predicament of his murderer.”

“The grave shall doubtless be explored, and that by tomorrow’s dawn,” said the monk, “I will see it done with mine own eyes”

“But,” said the prisoner, “I protest against all evidence which may arise from its contents, and do insist beforehand, that whatever may be found in that grave shall not prejudice me in my defence. I have been so haunted by diabolical deceptions in this matter, that what do I know but that the devil may assume the form of this rustical juvenal, in order to procure me farther vexation? — I protest to you, holy father, it is my very thought that there is witchcraft in all that hath befallen me. Since I entered into this northern land, in which men say that sorceries do abound, I, who am held in awe and regard even by the prime gallants in the court of Feliciana, have been here bearded and taunted by a clod-treading clown. I, whom Vincentio Saviola termed his nimblest and most agile disciple, was, to speak briefly, foiled by a cow-boy, who knew no more of fence than is used at every country wake. I am run, as it seemed to me, through the body, with a very sufficient stoccata, and faint on the spot; and yet, when I recover, I find myself without either wem or wound, and, lacking nothing of my apparel, saving my murrey-coloured doublet, slashed with satin, which I will pray may be inquired after, lest the devil, who transported me, should have dropped it in his passage among some of the trees or bushes — it being a choice and most fanciful piece of raiment, which I wore for the first time at the Queen’s pageant in Southwark.”

“Sir Knight,” said the monk, “you do again go astray from this matter. I inquire of you respecting that which concerns the life of another man, and it may be, touches your own also, and you answer me with the tale of an old doublet!”

“Old!” exclaimed the knight; “now, by the gods and saints, if there be a gallant at the British Court more fancifully considerate, and more considerately fanciful, but quaintly curious, and more curiously quaint, in frequent changes of all rich articles of vesture, becoming one who may be accounted point-device a courtier, I will give you leave to term me a slave and a liar.”

The monk thought, but did not say, that he had already acquired right to doubt the veracity of the Euphuist, considering the marvellous tale which he had told. Yet his own strange adventure, and that of Father Philip, rushed on his mind, and forbade his coming to any conclusion. He contented himself, therefore, with observing, that these were certainly strange incidents, and requested to know if Sir Piercie Shafton had any other reason for suspecting himself to be in a manner so particularly selected for the sport of sorcery and witchcraft.

“Sir Sub-Prior,” said the Euphuist, “the most extraordinary circumstance remains behind, which alone, had I neither been bearded in dispute, nor foiled in combat, nor wounded and cured in the space of a few hours, would nevertheless of itself, and without any other corroborative, have compelled me to believe myself the subject of some malevolent fascination. Reverend sir, it is not to your ears that men should tell tales of love and gallantry, nor is Sir Piercie Shafton one who, to any ears whatsoever, is wont to boast of his fair acceptance with the choice and prime beauties of the court; insomuch that a lady, none of the least resplendent constellations which revolve in that hemisphere of honour, pleasure, and beauty, but whose name I here pretermit, was wont to call me her Taciturnity. Nevertheless truth must be spoken; and I cannot but allow, as the general report of the court, allowed in camps, and echoed back by city and country, that in the alacrity of the accost, the tender delicacy of the regard, the facetiousness of the address, the adopting and pursuing of the fancy, the solemn close and the graceful fall-off, Piercie Shafton was accounted the only gallant of the time, and so well accepted among the choicer beauties of the age, that no silk-hosed reveller of the presence-chamber, or plumed jouster of the tilt-yard, approached him by a bow’s length in the ladies’ regard, being the mark at which every well-born and generous juvenal aimeth his shaft. Nevertheless, reverend sir, having found in this rude place something which by blood and birth might be termed a lady, and being desirous to keep my gallant humour in exercise, as well as to show my sworn devotion to the sex in general, I did shoot off some arrows of compliment at this Mary Avenel, terming her my Discretion, with other quaint and well-imagined courtesies, rather bestowed out of my bounty than warranted by her merit, or perchance like unto the boyish fowler, who, rather than not exercise his bird-piece, will shoot at crows or magpies for lack of better game ——”

“Mary Avenel is much obliged by your notice,” answered the monk; “but to what does all this detail of past and present gallantry conduct us?”

“Marry, to this conclusion,” answered the knight; “that either this my Discretion, or I myself, am little less than bewitched; for, instead of receiving my accost with a gratifying bow, answering my regard with a suppressed smile, accompanying my falling off or departure with a slight sigh — honours with which I protest to you the noblest dancers and proudest beauties in Feliciana have graced my poor services — she hath paid me as little and as cold regard as if I had been some hob-nailed clown of these bleak mountains! Nay, this very day, while I was in the act of kneeling at her feet to render her the succours of this pungent quintessence, of purest spirit distilled by the fairest hands of the court of Feliciana, she pushed me from her with looks which savoured of repugnance, and, as I think, thrust at me with her foot as if to spurn me from her presence. These things, reverend father, are strange, portentous, unnatural, and befall not in the current of mortal affairs, but are symptomatic of sorcery and fascination. So that, having given to your reverence a perfect, simple, and plain account of all that I know concerning this matter, I leave it to your wisdom to solve what may be found soluble in the same, it being my purpose tomorrow, with the peep of dawn, to set forward towards Edinburgh.”

“I grieve to be an interruption to your designs, Sir Knight,” said the monk, “but that purpose of thine may hardly be fulfilled.”

“How, reverend father!” said the knight, with an air of the utmost surprise; “if what you say respects my departure, understand that it must be, for I have so resolved it.”

“Sir Knight,” reiterated the Sub-Prior, “I must once more repeat, this cannot be, until the Abbot’s pleasure be known in the matter.”

“Reverend sir,” said the knight, drawing himself up with great dignity, “I desire my hearty and thankful commendations to the Abbot; but in this matter I have nothing to do with his reverend pleasure, designing only to consult my own.”

“Pardon me,” said the Sub-Prior; “the Lord Abbot hath in this matter a voice potential.”

Sir Piercie Shafton’s colour began to rise —“I marvel,” he said, “to hear your reverence talk thus — What! will you, for the imagined death of a rude, low-born frampler and wrangler, venture to impinge upon the liberty of the kinsman of the house of Piercie?”

“Sir Knight,” returned the Sub-Prior, civilly, “your high lineage and your kindling anger will avail you nothing in this matter — You shall not come here to seek a shelter, and then spill our blood as if it were water.”

“I tell you,” said the knight, “once more, as I have told you already, that there was no blood spilled but mine own!”

“That remains to be proved,” replied the Sub-Prior; “we of the community of Saint Mary’s of Kennaquhair, use not to take fairy tales in exchange for the lives of our liege vassals.”

“We of the house of Piercie,” answered Shafton, “brook neither threats nor restraint — I say I will travel tomorrow, happen what may!”

“And I,” answered the Sub-Prior, in the same tone of determination, “say that I will break your journey, come what may!&rd............