"Will you give me freedom to leave your Abbey?"

"When you have abided your sentence and purged your sin."

"Then I had rather die where I stand than give up my sword."

A dangerous flame lit in the Abbot's eyes. He came of a fighting
Norman stock, like so many of those fierce prelates who, bearing a
mace lest they should be guilty of effusion of blood, led their
troops into battle, ever remembering that it was one of their own
cloth and dignity who, crosier in hand, had turned the long-drawn
bloody day of Hastings. The soft accent of the churchman was gone
and it was the hard voice of a soldier which said--

"One minute I give you, and no more. Then when I cry 'Loose!'
drive me an arrow through his body."

The shaft was fitted, the bow was bent, and the stern eyes of the
woodman were fixed on his mark. Slowly the minute passed, while
Nigel breathed a prayer to his three soldier saints, not that they
should save his body in this life, but that they should have a
kindly care for his soul in the next. Some thought of a fierce
wildcat sally crossed his mind, but once out of his corner he was
lost indeed. Yet at the last he would have rushed among his
enemies, and his body was bent for the spring, when with a deep
sonorous hum, like a breaking harp-string, the cord of the bow was
cloven in twain, and the arrow tinkled upon the tiled floor. At
the same moment a young curly-headed bowman, whose broad shoulders
and deep chest told of immense strength, as clearly as his frank,
laughing face and honest hazel eyes did of good humor and courage,