, "but I have been at neither of these places. I was bred amongst
the Cistercian monks at Beaulieu Abbey."

"Pooh, pooh!" they cried both together. "What sort of an upbringing is
that?"

"_Non cuivis contingit adire Corinthum_," quoth Alleyne.

"Come, brother Stephen, he hath some tincture of letters," said the
melancholy man more hopefully. "He may be the better judge, since he
hath no call to side with either of us. Now, attention, friend, and let
your ears work as well as your nether jaw. _Judex damnatur_--you know
the old saw. Here am I upholding the good fame of the learned Duns
Scotus against the foolish quibblings and poor silly reasonings of
Willie Ockham."

"While I," quoth the other loudly, "do maintain the good sense
and extraordinary wisdom of that most learned William against the
crack-brained fantasies of the muddy Scotchman, who hath hid such little
wit as he has under so vast a pile of words, that it is like one drop of
Gascony in a firkin of ditch-water. Solomon his wisdom would not suffice
to say what the rogue means."

"Certes, Stephen Hapgood, his wisdom doth not suffice," cried the other.
"It is as though a mole cried out against the morning star, because he
could not see it. But our dispute, friend, is concerning the nature of
that subtle essence which we call thought. For I hold with the learned
Scotus that thought is in very truth a thing, even as vapor or fumes,
or many other substances which our gross bodily eyes are blind to. For,
look you, that which produces a thing must be itself a thing, and if a
man's thought may produce a written book, then must thought itself be a
material thing, even as the book is. Have I expressed it? Do I make it
plain?"

"Whereas I hold," shouted the other, "with my revered preceptor,
_doctor, praeclarus et excellentissimus_, that all things are but
thought; for when thought is gone I prythee where are the things then?
Here are trees about us, and I see them because I think I see them, but
if I have swooned, or sleep, or am in wine, then, my thought having gone
forth from me, lo the trees go forth also. How now, coz, have I touched
thee on the raw?"

Alleyne sat between them munching his bread, while the twain disputed
across his knees, leaning forward with flushed faces and darting
hands, in all the heat of argument. Never had he heard such jargon of
scholastic philosophy, such fine-drawn distinctions, such cross-fire of
major and minor, proposition, syll