Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/45

Rh remarked, more used in England than in any other country. Yet it sent the blood to his temples again, and he wondered, as he turned away, what the Abbot Berghersh would have answered to so frank an invitation. He was still tingling from this new experience when he came out upon the high road and saw a sight which drove all other thoughts from his mind.

Some way down from where he had left him the unfortunate Peter was stamping and raving tenfold worse than before. Now, however, instead of the great white cloak, he had no clothes on at all, save a short woollen shirt and a pair of leather shoes. Far down the road a long-legged figure was running, with a bundle under one arm and the other hand to his side, like a man who laughs until he is sore.

'See him!' yelled Peter. 'Look to him! You shall be my witness. He shall see Winchester gaol for this. See where he goes with my cloak under his arm!'

'Who then?' cried Alleyne.

'Who but that cursed brother John! He hath not left me clothes enough to make a gallybagger. The double thief hath cozened me out of my gown.'

'Stay though, my friend, it was his gown,' objected Alleyne.

'It boots not. He hath them all—gown, jerkin, hosen, and all. Gramercy to him that he left me the shirt and the shoon! I doubt not that he will be back for them anon.'

'But how came this?' asked Alleyne, open-eyed with astonishment.

'Are those the clothes? For dear charity's sake, give them to me. Not the Pope himself shall have these from me, though he sent the whole college of cardinals to ask it. How came it? Why, you had scarce gone ere this loathly John came running back again, and when I oped mouth to reproach him, he asked me whether it was indeed likely that a man of prayer would leave his own godly raiment in order to take a layman's jerkin. He had, he said, but gone for a while that I might be the freer for my devotions. On this I plucked off