Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/42

18 once, but the long gown clogged him so that he slowed down into a shambling walk, and finally plumped into the heather once more.

'Young friend,' said he, when Alleyne was abreast of him, 'I fear from thy garb that thou canst know little of the Abbey of Beaulieu.'

'Then you are in error, friend,' the clerk answered, 'for I have spent all my days within its walls.'

'Hast so indeed?' cried he. 'Then perhaps canst tell me the name of a great loathly lump of a brother wi' freckled face an' a hand like a spade. His eyes were black an' his hair was red an' his voice like the parish bull. I trow that there cannot be two alike in the same cloisters.'

'That surely can be no other than brother John,' said Alleyne. 'I trust he has done you no wrong, that you should be so hot against him.'

'Wrong, quotha?' cried the other, jumping out of the heather. 'Wrong! why be hath stolen every plack of clothing off my back, if that be a wrong, and hath left me here in this sorry frock of white falding, so that I have shame to go back to my wife, lest she think that I have donned her old kirtle. Harrow and alas that ever I should have met him!'

'But how came this?' asked the young clerk, who could scarce keep from laughter at the sight of the hot little man so swathed in the great white cloak.

'It came in this way,' he said, sitting down once more: 'I was passing this way, hoping to reach Lymington ere nightfall, when I came on this red-headed knave seated even where we are sitting now. I uncovered and louted as I passed, thinking that he might be a holy man at his orisons, but he called to me and asked me if I had heard speak of the new indulgence in favour of the Cistercians. "Not I," I answered. "Then the worse for thy soul," said he; and with that he broke into a long tale how that on account of the virtues of the Abbot Berghersh it had been decreed by the Pope that whoever should wear the habit of a monk of Beaulieu for as long