this day. You are young and hot words come easily to your lips.
How fares the forester?"

"His hurt is grievous, Father Abbot, but he will live," said a
brother, looking up from the prostrate form. "With a blood-letting
and an electuary, I will warrant him sound within a month."

"Then bear him to the hospital. And now, brother, about this
terrible beast who still gazes and snorts at us over the top of
the wall as though his thoughts of Holy Church were as uncouth as
those of Squire Nigel himself, what are we to do with him?"

"Here is Franklin Aylward," said one of the brethren. "The horse
was his, and doubtless he will take it back to his farm."

But the stout red-faced farmer shook his head at the proposal.
"Not I, in faith!" said he. "The beast hath chased me twice round
the paddock; it has nigh slain my boy Samkin. He would never be
happy till he had ridden it, nor has he ever been happy since.
There is not a hind in my employ who will enter his stall. Ill
fare the day that ever I took the beast from the Castle stud at
Guildford, where they could do nothing with it and no rider could
be found bold enough to mount it! When the sacrist here took it
for a fifty-shilling debt he made his own bargain and must abide
by it. He comes no more to the Crooksbury farm."

"And he stays no more here," said the Abbot. "Brother sacrist,
you have raised the Devil, and it is for you to lay it again."

"That I will most readily," cried the sacrist. "The pittance-