o thy
grosser feelings that we must turn in such natures as thine, and as
thou art no longer under the shield of holy church there is the less
difficulty. Ho there! lay-brothers--Francis, Naomi, Joseph--seize him
and bind his arms! Drag him forth, and let the foresters and the porters
scourge him from the precincts!"

As these three brothers advanced towards him to carry out the Abbot's
direction, the smile faded from the novice's face, and he glanced right
and left with his fierce brown eyes, like a bull at a baiting. Then,
with a sudden deep-chested shout, he tore up the heavy oaken prie-dieu
and poised it to strike, taking two steps backward the while, that none
might take him at a vantage.

"By the black rood of Waltham!" he roared, "if any knave among you lays
a finger-end upon the edge of my gown, I will crush his skull like a
filbert!" With his thick knotted arms, his thundering voice, and his
bristle of red hair, there was something so repellent in the man that
the three brothers flew back at the very glare of him; and the two rows
of white monks strained away from him like poplars in a tempest. The
Abbot only sprang forward with shining eyes; but the chancellor and the
master hung upon either arm and wrested him back out of danger's way.

"He is possessed of a devil!" they shouted. "Run, brother Ambrose,
brother Joachim! Call Hugh of the Mill, and Woodman Wat, and Raoul with
his arbalest and bolts. Tell them that we are in fear of our lives! Run,
run! for the love of the Virgin!"

But the novice was a strategist as well as a man of action. Springing
forward, he hurled his unwieldy weapon at brother Ambrose, and, as desk
and monk clattered on to the floor together, he sprang through the open
door and down the winding stair. Sleepy old brother Athanasius, at
the porter's cell, had a fleeting vision of twinkling feet and flying
skirts; but before he had time to rub his eyes the recreant had passed
the lodge, and was speeding as fast as his sandals could patter along
the Lyndhurst Road.

CHAPTER II. HOW ALLEYNE EDRICSON CAME OUT INTO THE WORLD.

Never had the peaceful atmosphere of the old Cistercian house been so
rudely ruffled. Never had there been insurrection so sudden, so short,
and so successful. Yet the Abbot Berghersh was a man of too firm a grain
to allow one bold outbreak to imperil the settled order of his great
household. In a few hot and bitter words, he compared their false
brother's exit