Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/500

RV 432 (Rh) tongue holds the touch better than my arm. This boy of thine gave me the foil sorely this morning. The brown varlet has turned as stout a trooper as I prophesied; and where is White Head?'

'Alas!' said the mother, looking down, 'Edward has taken orders, and become a monk of this abbey.'

'A monk and a soldier! Evil trades both, my good dame. Better have made one a good master fashioner, like old Overstitch of Holderness. I sighed when I envied you the two bonny children, but I sigh not now to call either the monk or the soldier mine own. The soldier dies in the field, the monk scarce lives in the cloister.'

'My dearest mother,' said Halbert, 'where is Edward—can I not speak with him?'

'He has just left us for the present,' said Father Philip, 'upon a message from the lord abbot.'

'And Mary, my dearest mother?' said Halbert. Mary Avenel was not far distant, and the three were soon withdrawn from the crowd, to hear and relate their various chances of fortune.

While the subordinate personages thus disposed of themselves, the abbot held serious discussion with the two earls, and, partly yielding to their demands, partly defending himself with skill and eloquence, was enabled to make a composition for his convent, which left it provisionally in no worse situation than before. The earls were the more reluctant to drive matters to extremity, since he protested that if urged beyond what his conscience would comply with, he would throw the whole lands of the monastery into the Queen of Scotland's hands, to be disposed of at her pleasure. This would not have answered the views of the earls, who were contented, for the time, with a moderate sacrifice of money and lands. Matters being so far settled, the abbot became anxious for the fate of Sir Piercie Shafton, and implored mercy in his behalf.

'He is a coxcomb,' he said, 'my lords, but he is a generous, though a vain fool; and it is my firm belief you have this day done him more pain than if you had run a poniard into him.'

'Run a needle into him, you mean, abbot,' said the Earl of Morton; 'by mine honour, I thought this grandson of