master can stop the fifty shillings from my very own weekly dole,
and so the Abbey be none the poorer. In the meantime here is Wat
with his arbalist and a bolt in his girdle. Let him drive it to
the head through this cursed creature, for his hide and his hoofs
are of more value than his wicked self."

A hard brown old woodman who had been shooting vermin in the Abbey
groves stepped forward with a grin of pleasure. After a lifetime
of stoats and foxes, this was indeed a noble quarry which was to
fall before him. Fitting a bolt on the nut of his taut crossbow,
he had raised it to his shoulder and leveled it at the fierce,
proud, disheveled head which tossed in savage freedom at the other
side of the wall. His finger was crooked on the spring, when a
blow from a whip struck the bow upward and the bolt flew harmless
over the Abbey orchard, while the woodman shrank abashed from
Nigel Loring's angry eyes.

"Keep your bolts for your weasels!" said he. "Would you take life
from a creature whose only fault is that its spirit is so high
that it has met none yet who dare control it? You would slay such
a horse as a king might be proud to mount, and all because a
country franklin, or a monk, or a monk's varlet, has not the wit
nor the hands to master him?"

The sacrist turned swiftly on the Squire. "The Abbey owes you an
offering for this day's work, however rude your words may be,"
said he. "If you think so much of the horse, you may desire to
own it. If I am to pay for it, then with the holy Abbot's
permission it is in my gift and I bestow it freely upon you."