"Your name?" he asked suddenly, the words coming out with a sound like
the first grating of a saw on stone.

"They call me Norman Leslie de Pitcullo," I answered. "And yours?"

"My name," he said, "is Noiroufle"--and I thought that never had I seen a
man so well fitted with a name;--"in religion, Brother Thomas, a poor
brother of the Order of the mad St. Francis of Assisi."

"Then, Brother Thomas, how do you mean to cross this water which lies
between you and the exercise of your holy calling? Do you swim?"

"Like a stone cannon-ball, and, for all that I can find, the cursed water
has no bottom. Cross!" he snarled. "Let me see you swim."

I was glad enough to be quit of him so soon, but I noticed that, as I
stripped and packed my clothes to carry in a bundle on my head, the holy
man set his foot in the stirrup of his weapon, and was winding up his
arbalest with a windlass, a bolt in his mouth, watching at the same time
a heron that rose from a marsh on the further side of the stream. On
this bird, I deemed, he meant to try his skill with the arbalest.

"Adieu, Brother Thomas," I said, as I took the water; and in a few
strokes I was across and running up and down on the bank to get myself
dry. "Back!" came his grating voice--"back! and without your clothes,
you wine-sack of Scotland, or I shoot!" and his arbalest was levelled on
me.

I have often asked myself since what I should have done, and what was the
part of a brave man. Perchance I might have dived, and swum down-stream