Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/285

274 with us. Can yon sleep on a shake-down of dry grass?"

"I have slept on bare earth and bare decks many a time before now."

"Truly? Yet you look of noble blood?" "Good blood is scant use if our fortunes be low." "Ah! You have fallen on evil days?"

"Very evil."

"And you were of proud stock once?"

"Good father, I thought in the eyes of the Church all men were equal."

He spoke curtly, to rid himself of the Cistercian's restless curiosity, and flinging his fishing-shirt open at the breast, he set himself to fixing the stakes and the nets at the head of the great pool. Every sort of wood and water lore had been familiar to him from his earliest boyhood; every secret of the loch and heather he had learnt from the days of childhood. With all the skill and strength that were in him he went to the toil of working for the monastery fare, of reaping such a harvest from the marshes and the sedges and the lakes as should make the brethren give him lodging with favouring cordiality and without questions. He worked like a slave, in the scorch of the Italian sky, conscious