it a dishonour to one of my profession to pass out of this world in company with a Jew, I heaved up my halberd to beat his brains out; but I took pity on his gray hairs, and judged it better to lay down the partisan, and take up my spiritual weapon for his conversation. And truly, by the blessing of St. Dunstan, the seed has been sown in good soil; only that, with speaking to him of mysteries through the whole night, and being in a manner fasting (for the few draughts of sack which I sharpened my wits with were not worth marking), my head is well-nigh dizzied, I trow.— But I was clean exhausted.—Gilbert and Wibbald know in what state they found me—quite and clean exhausted.”
“We can bear witness,” said Guilbert; “for when we had cleared away the ruin, and by St. Dunstan’s help lighted upon the dungeon stair, we found the runlet of sack half empty, the Jew half dead, and the Friar more than half—exhausted, as he calls it.”
“Ye be knaves! ye lie!” retorted the offended Friar; “it was you and your gormandising companions that drank up the sack, and called it your morning draught—I am a pagan, an I kept it not for the Captain’s own throat. But what recks it? The Jew is converted, and understands all I have told him, very nearly, if not altogether, as well as myself.”
“Jew,” said the Captain, “is this true? hast thou renounced thine unbelief?”
“May I so find mercy in your eyes,” said the Jew, “as I know not one word which the reverend prelate spake to me all this fearful night. Alas! I was so distraught with agony, and fear, and grief, that had our holy father Abraham come to preach to me, he had found but a deaf listener.”
“Thou liest, Jew, and thou knowest thou dost,” said the Friar; “I will remind thee of but one word of our conference—thou didst promise to give all thy substance to our Holy Order.”
“So help me the Promise, fair sirs,” said Isaac, even more alarmed than before, “as no such sounds ever crossed my lips! Alas! I am an aged, beggared man—I fear me a childless—have ruth on me, and let me go!”
“Nay,” said the Friar, “if thou dost retract vows made in favour of Holy Church, thou must do penance.”
Accordingly, he raised his halberd, and would have laid the staff of it lustily on the Jew’s shoulders, had not the Black Knight stopped the blow, and thereby transferred the Holy Clerk’s resentment to himself.
“By St. Thomas of Kent,” said he, “an I buckle to my gear, will teach thee, sir lazy lover, to mell with thine own matters, maugre thine iron case there!”
“Nay, be not wroth with me,” said the Knight; “thou knowest I am thy sworn friend and comrade.”
“I know no such thing,” answered the Friar; “and defy thee for a meddling coxcomb!”
“Nay, but,” said the Knight, who seemed to take a pleasure in provoking his quondam host, “hast thou forgotten how, that for my sake (for I say nothing of the temptation of the flagon and the pasty) thou didst break thy vow of fast and vigil?”
“Truly, friend,” said the Friar, clenching his huge fist, “I will bestow a buffet on thee.”
“I accept of no such presents,” said the Knight; “I am content to take thy cuff4 as a loan, but I will repay thee with usury as deep as ever thy prisoner there exacted in his traffic.”
“I will prove that presently,” said the Friar.
“Hola!” cried the Captain, “what art thou after, mad Friar? brawling beneath our Trysting-tree?”