Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/148

RV 80 (Rh) marked both with cut and birn; the sooner the skin is off, and he is in saultfat, the less like you are to have trouble—you understand me? Let me have a peck of corn for my horse, and beef and beer for myself, for I must go on to the monastery—though I think this monk here might do mine errand.'

'Thine errand, rude man!' said the sub-prior, knitting his brows

'For God's sake!' cried poor Dame Glendinning, terrified at the idea of a quarrel between them. 'O Christie! it is the sub-prior—O reverend sir, it is Christie of the Clinthill, the laird's chief jackman; ye know that little havings can be expected from the like o' them.'

'Are you a retainer of the Laird of Avenel?' said the monk, addressing himself to the horseman, 'and do you speak thus rudely to a brother of Saint Mary's, to whom thy master is so much beholden?'

'He means to be yet more beholden to your house, sir monk,' answered the fellow; 'for hearing his sister-in-law, the widow of Walter of Avenel, was on her death-bed, he sent me to. say to the father abbot and the brethren, that he will hold the funeral feast at their convent, and invites himself thereto, with a score of horse and some friends, and to abide there for three days and three nights, having horse-meat and men's-meat at the charge of the community; of which his intention he sends due notice, that fitting preparation may be timeously made.'

'Friend,' said the sub-prior, 'believe not that I will do to the father abbot the indignity of delivering such an errand. Think'st thou the goods of the Church were bestowed upon her by holy princes and pious nobles, now dead and gone, to be consumed in revelry by every profligate layman who numbers in his train more followers than he can support by honest means, or by his own incomings? Tell thy master, from the sub-prior of Saint Mary's, that the Primate hath issued his commands to us that we submit no longer to this compulsory exaction of hospitality on slight or false pretences. Our lands and goods were given to relieve pilgrims and pious persons, not to feast bands of rude soldiers.'

'This to me!' said the angry spearman, 'this to me