we shall plant pot-herbs on the mud bottom, and after we have gathered
them in, return the fish and water once more from the lower pond, so
that they may fatten among the rich stubble."

"Good!" cried the Abbot. "I would have three fish-stews in every
well-ordered house--one dry for herbs, one shallow for the fry and the
yearlings, and one deep for the breeders and the tablefish. But still, I
have not heard you say how the pike came in the Abbot's pond."

A spasm of anger passed over the fierce face of the sacrist, and his
keys rattled as his bony hand clasped them more tightly. "Young Nigel
Loring!" said he. "He swore that he would do us scathe, and in this way
he has done it."

"How know you this?"

"Six weeks ago he was seen day by day fishing for pike at the great Lake
of Frensham. Twice at night he has been met with a bundle of straw under
his arm on the Hankley Down. Well, I wot that the straw was wet and that
a live pike lay within it."

The Abbot shook his head. "I have heard much of this youth's wild ways;
but now indeed he has passed all bounds if what you say be truth. It
was bad enough when it was said that he slew the King's deer in Woolmer
Chase, or broke the head of Hobbs the chapman, so that he lay for seven
days betwixt life and death in our infirmary, saved only by Brother
Peter's skill in the pharmacies of herbs; but to put pike in the Abbot's
pond--why should he play such a devil's prank?"

"Because he hates the House of Waverley, holy father; because he swears
that we hold his father's land."

"In which there is surely some truth."

"But, holy father, we hold no more than the law has allowed."

"True, brother, and yet between ourselves, we may admit that the heavier
purse may weigh down the scales of Justice. When I have passed the old
house and have seen that aged woman with her ruddled cheeks and her
baleful eyes look the curses she dare not speak, I have many a time
wished that we had other neighbors."

"That we can soon bring about, holy father. Indeed, it is of it that I
wished to speak to you. Surely it is not hard for us to drive them from
the country-side. There are thirty years' claims of escuage unsettled,
and there is Sergeant Wilkins, the lawyer of Guildford, whom I will
warrant to draw up such arrears of dues and rents and issues of hidage
and fodder-corn that these folk, who are as beggarly as they are proud,
will have to sell the roof-tree over them ere they can meet them