allies and confederates, receive no defiances at the hands of slaves, bondsmen, or fugitives. If the person calling himself the Black Knight have indeed a claim to the honours of chivalry, he ought to know that he stands degraded by his present association, and has no right to ask reckoning at the hands of good men of noble blood. Touching the prisoners we have made, we do in Christian charity require you to send a man of religion, to receive their confession, and reconcile them with God; since it is our fixed intention to execute them this morning before noon, so that their heads being placed on the battlements, shall show to all men how lightly we esteem those who have bestirred themselves in their rescue. Wherefore, as above, we require you to send a priest to reconcile them to God, in doing which you shall render them the last earthly service." This letter being folded, was delivered to the squire, and by him to the messenger who waited without, as the answer to that which he had brought. The yeoman having thus accomplished his mission, returned to the headquarters of the allies, which were for the present established under a venerable oak tree, about three arrow-flights distant from the castle. Here Wamba and Gurth, with their allies the Black Knight and Locksley, and the jovial hermit, awaited with impatience an answer to their summons. Around, and at a distance from them, were seen many a bold yeoman, whose silvan dress and weatherbeaten countenances showed the ordinary nature of their occupation. More than two hundred had already assembled, and others were fast coming in. Those whom they obeyed as leaders were only distinguished from the others by a feather in the cap, their dress, arms, and equip ments being in all other respects the same. Besides these bands, a less orderly and a worse armed force, consisting of the Saxon inhabitants of the neighbouring township, as well as many bondsmen and servants from Čedric's extensive estate, had already arrived, for the purpose of assisting in his rescue. Few of these were armed otherwise than with such rustic weapons as necessity sometimes converts to military purposes. Boar-spears, scythes, flails, and the like, were their chief arms; for the Normans, with the usual policy of conquerors, were jealous of permitting to the vanquished Saxong the possession or the use of swords and spears. These circumstances rendered the assistance of the Saxons far from being so formidable to the besieged, as the strength of the men themselves, their superior numbers, and the animation inspired by a just cause, might otherwise well have made them. It was to the leaders of this motley army that the letter of the Templar was now delivered. Reference was at first made to the chaplain for an exposition of its contents. By the crook of St. Dunstan," said that worthy ecclesiastic, "which hath brought more sheep within the sheepfold than the crook of e'er another saint in Paradise, I swear that I cannot expound unto you this jargon, which, whether it be French or Arabic, is beyond my guess." He then gave the letter to Gurth, who shook his head gruffly, and passed it to Wamba. The Jester looked at each of the four corners of the paper with such a grin of affected intelligence as a monkey is apt to assume upon similar occasions, then cut a caper, and gave the letter to Locksley. "If the long letters were bows, and the short letters broad arrows, I might know something of the matter," said the brave yeoman; "but as the matter stands, the meaning is as safe, for me, as the stag that's at twelve miles distance." "I must be clerk, then," said the Black Knight; and taking the letter from Locksley, he first read it over to himself, and then explained the meaning in Saxon to his confederates. "Execute the noble Cedric!" exclaimed Wamba; “by the rood, thou must be mistaken, Sir Knight." "Not I, my worthy friend," replied the knight; "I have explained the words as they are here set down." "Then, by St. Thomas of Canterbury," replied Gurth, "we will have the castle, should we tear it down with our hands!" "We have nothing else to tear it with," replied Wamba; "but mine are scarce fit to make mammocks of freestone and mortar." ""Tis but a contrivance to gain time," said Locksley;" they dare not do a deed for which I could exact a fearful penalty." "I would," said the Black Knight, "there were some one among us who could obtain admission into the castle, and dis cover how the case stands with the besieged. Methinks, as they require a confessor to be sent, this holy hermit might at once exercise his pious vocation, and procure us the informa tion we desire." "A plague on thee, and thy advice!" said the pious hermit; "I tell thee, Sir Slothful Knight, that when I doff my friar's frock, my priesthood, my sanctity, my very Latin, are put off along with it; and when in my green jerkin, I can better kill twenty deer than confess one Christian." "I fear," said the Black Knight, "I fear greatly, there is no one here that is qualified to take upon him, for the nonce, this same character of father confessor?" All looked on each other, and were silent. "I see," said Wamba, after a short pause, "that the fool must be still the fool, and put his neck in the venture which wise men shrink from. You must know, my dear cousins and countrymen, that I wore russet before I wore motley, and was bred to be a friar, until a brain-fever came upon me and left ine just wit enough to be a fool. I trust, with the assistance of the good hermit's frock, together with the priesthood, sanctity, and learning which are stitched into the cowl of it, I shall be found qualified to administer both worldly and ghostly comfort to our worthy master Cedric, and his companions in adversity." "Hath he sense enough, thinkest thou?" said the Black Knight, addressing Gurth. "I know not," said Gurth; "but if he hath not, it will be the first time he hath wanted wit to turn his folly to account.” "On with the frock, then, good fellow," quoth the Knight, "and let thy master send us an account of their situation within the castle. Their numbers must be few, and it is five to one they may be accessible by a sudden and bold attack. Time wears-away with thee." "And, in the meantime," said Locksley, "we will beset the place so closely, that not so much as a fly shall carry news from thence. So that, my good friend," he continued, addressing Wamba, "thou mayst assure these tyrants, that whatever vio lence they exercise on the persons of their prisoners, shall be most severely repaid upon their own.” "Pax vobiscum," said Wamba, who was now muffled in his religious disguise. And so saying, he imitated the solemn and stately deport ment of a friar, and departed to execute his mission. CHAPTER XXVI The hottest horse will oft be cool, Old Song. WHEN the Jester, arrayed in the cowl and frock of the hermit, and having his knotted cord twisted round his middle, stood before the portal of the castle of Front-de-Bœuf, the warder demanded of him his name and errand. "Pax vobiscum," answered the Jester, "I am a poor brother of the Order of St. Francis, who come hither to do my office to certain unhappy prisoners now secured within this castle." "Thou art a bold friar," said the warder, "to come hither, where, saving our own drunken confessor, a cock of thy feather hath not crowed these twenty years." 66 "Yet, I pray thee, do mine errand to the lord of the castle," answered the pretended friar; "trust me it will find good acceptance with him, and the cock shall crow, that the whole castle shall hear him." “Gramercy,” said the warder; “but if I come to shame for leaving my post upon thine errand, I will try whether a friar's grey gown be proof against a grey-goose shaft." With this threat he left his turret, and carried to the hall of the castle his unwonted intelligence, that a holy friar stood before the gate and demanded instant admission. With no small wonder he received his master's commands to admit the holy man immediately; and, having previously manned the entrance to guard against surprise, he obeyed, without further scruple, the commands which he had received. The harebrained self-conceit which had emboldened Wamba to undertake this dangerous office, was scarce sufficient to support him when he found himself in the presence of a man so dreadful, and so much dreaded, as Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, and he brought out his pax vobiscum, to which he, in a good measure, trusted for supporting his character, with more anxiety and hesitation than had hitherto accompanied it. But Front-de- Bœuf was accustomed to see men of all ranks tremble in his presence, so that the timidity of the supposed father did not give him any cause of suspicion. "Who and whence art thou, priest?" said he. "Pax vobiscum," reiterated the Jester, "I am a poor servant of St. Francis, who, travelling through this wilderness, have fallen among thieves, as Scripture hath it, quidam viator incidit in latrones, which thieves have sent me unto this castle in order to do my ghostly office on two persons condemned by your honourable justice." "Ay, right," answered Front-de-Boeuf; "and canst thou tell me holy father, the number of those banditti?" "Gallant sir," answered the Jester, "nomen illis legio, their name is legion." "Tell me in plain terms what numbers there are, or, priest, thy cloak and cord will ill protect thee.” "Alas!" said the supposed friar, "cor meum eructavit, that is to say, I was like to burst with fear! but I conceive they may bewhat of yeomen-what of commons, at least five hundred "What!" said the Templar, who came into the hall that moment, "muster the wasps so thick here? It is time to stifle such a mischievous brood.' Then taking Front-de-Bœuf aside, "Knowest thou the priest?" "He is a stranger from a distant convent," said Front-de-Bouf; "I know him not." "Then trust him not with thy purpose in words," answered the Templar. "Let him carry a written order to De Bracy's company of Free Companions, to repair instantly to their mas ter's aid. In the meantime, and that the shaveling may suspect nothing, permit him to go freely about his task of preparing these Saxon hogs for the slaughter-house." |