hurt a fly's
body; much less damn his soul; and, after all, the poor soldiers were not
to blame; and 'twas a queer cursing, I thought too, to be done like that;
but maybe 'twas a new papal method. I went round to the north chapel, and
there he was taking off his cope.

"'Well,' he said to me, 'how did I do it?'

"'Do it?' I said; 'do it? Why, you've damned those poor lads' souls
eternally. The hand of the Lord was with you,' I said.

"'Damned them?' said he; 'nonsense! 'Twas only your old herbal that I
read at them; and the cope too, 'twas inside out.'"

* * * *

Then the old man told Anthony other stories of his earlier life, how he
had been educated at the university and been at Court in King Henry's
reign and Queen Mary's, but that he had lost heart at Elizabeth's
accession, and retired to his hills, where he could serve God according
to his conscience, and study God's works too, for he was a keen
naturalist. He told Anthony many stories about the deer, and the herds of
wild white hornless cattle that were now practically extinct on the
hills, and of a curious breed of four-horned sheep, skulls of all of
which species hung in his hall, and of the odd drinking-horns that
Anthony had admired the day before. There was one especially that he
talked much of, a buffalo horn on three silver feet fashioned like the
legs of an armed man; round the centre was a filleting inscribed, "_Qui
pugnat contra tres perdet duos_," and there was a cross patee on the
horn, and two other inscriptions, "_Nolite extollere cornu in altu'_" and
"_Qui bibat me adhuc siti'_." Mr. Brian told him it had been brought from
Italy by his grandfather.

They put up a quantity of grouse and several hares as they walked across
the moor; one of the hares, which had a curious patch of white between
his ears like a little night-cap, startled Mr. Brian so much that he
exclaimed aloud, crossed himself, and stood, a little pale, watching the
hare's head as it bobbed and swerved among the heather.

"I like it not," he said to Anthony, who inquired what was the matter.
"Satan hath appeared under some such form to many in history. Joachimus
Camerarius, who wrote _de natura daemonum_, tells, I think, a story of
a hare followed by a fox that ran across the path of a young man who
was riding on a horse, and who started in pursuit. Up and down hills and
dales they went, and soon the fox was no longer there, and the