Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/179

RV 111 (Rh) peddle in the mire with plough and harrow from Yule to Michaelmas. I will call none lord, but him who wears a sword to make his title good; and I will call none man, but he that can bear himself manlike and masterful.'

'For Heaven's sake, peace, brother!' said Edward; 'if such words were taken up and reported out of the house, they would be our mother's ruin.'

'Report them yourself, then, and they will be your making and nobody's marring save mine own. Say that Halbert Glendinning will never be vassal to an old man with a cowl and shaven crown, while there are twenty barons who wear casque and plume that lack bold followers. Let them grant you these wretched acres, and much meal may they bear you to make your brochan.' He left the room hastily, but instantly returned and continued to speak with the same tone of quick and irritated feeling. 'And you need not think so much, neither of you, and especially you, Edward, need not think so much of your parchment book there, and your cunning in reading it. By my faith, I will soon learn to read as well as you; and—for I know a better teacher than your grim old monk, and a better book than his printed breviary; and since you like scholar-craft so well, Mary Avenel, you shall see whether Edward or I have most of it.' He left the apartment, and came not again.

'What can be the matter with him?' said Mary, following Halbert with her eyes from the window, as with hasty and unequal steps he ran up the wild glen. 'Where can your brother be going, Edward? What book?—what teacher does he talk of?'

'It avails not guessing,' said Edward. 'Halbert is angry, he knows not why, and speaks of he knows not what; let us go again to our lessons, and he will come home when he has tired himself with scrambling among the crags as usual.'

But Mary's anxiety on account of Halbert seemed more deeply rooted. She declined prosecuting the task in which they had been so pleasingly engaged under the excuse of a headache; nor could Edward prevail upon her to resume it again that morning.

Meanwhile Halbert, his head unbonneted, his features