men who had followed the wars all their lives, and
had a hand in those battles which had made the whole world ring with the
fame and the wonder of the island infantry.

Six long weeks were taken in these preparations, and it was close on
Martinmas ere all was ready for a start. Nigh two months had Alleyne
Edricson been in Castle Twynham--months which were fated to turn the
whole current of his life, to divert it from that dark and lonely bourne
towards which it tended, and to guide it into freer and more sunlit
channels. Already he had learned to bless his father for that wise
provision which had made him seek to know the world ere he had ventured
to renounce it.

For it was a different place from that which he had pictured--very
different from that which he had heard described when the master of the
novices held forth to his charges upon the ravening wolves who lurked
for them beyond the peaceful folds of Beaulieu. There was cruelty in it,
doubtless, and lust and sin and sorrow; but were there not virtues to
atone, robust positive virtues which did not shrink from temptation,
which held their own in all the rough blasts of the work-a-day world?
How colorless by contrast appeared the sinlessness which came from
inability to sin, the conquest which was attained by flying from the
enemy! Monk-bred as he was, Alleyne had native shrewdness and a mind
which was young enough to form new conclusions and to outgrow old
ones. He could not fail to see that the men with whom he was thrown in
contact, rough-tongued, fierce and quarrelsome as they were, were yet of
deeper nature and of more service in the world than the ox-eyed brethren
who rose and ate and slept from year's end to year's end in their own
narrow, stagnant circle of existence. Abbot Berghersh was a good man,
but how was he better than this kindly knight, who lived as simple a
life, held as lofty and inflexible an ideal of duty, and did with all
his fearless heart whatever came to his hand to do? In turning from the
service of the one to that of the other, Alleyne could not feel that
he was lowering his aims in life. True that his gentle and thoughtful
nature recoiled from the grim work of war, yet in those days of martial
orders and militant brotherhoods there was no gulf fixed betwixt the
priest and the soldier. The man of God and the man of the sword might
without scandal be united in the same individual. Why then should he,
a mere clerk, have scruples when so fai