for embroidery an Arachne: for music a Siren: and for pickling
and preserving, did not one of her jars of sugared apricots give
you your last surfeit at Arlingford Castle?"

"Call you that preserving?" said the little friar; "I call it destroying.
Call you it pickling? Truly it pickled me. My life was saved by miracle."

"By canary," said brother Michael. "Canary is the only life preserver,
the true aurum potabile, the universal panacea for all diseases, thirst,
and short life. Your life was saved by canary."

"Indeed, reverend father," said Sir Ralph, "if the young
lady be half what you describe, she must be a paragon:
but your commending her for valour does somewhat amaze me."

"She can fence," said the little friar, "and draw the long bow,
and play at singlestick and quarter-staff."

"Yet mark you," said brother Michael, "not like a virago or a hoyden,
or one that would crack a serving-man's head for spilling gravy on her ruff,
but with such womanly grace and temperate self-command as if those manly
exercises belonged to her only, and were become for her sake feminine."

"You incite me," said Sir Ralph, "to view her more nearly.
That madcap earl found me other employment than to remark her
in the chapel."

"The earl is a worthy peer," said brother Michael; "he is worth
any fourteen earls on this side Trent, and any seven on the other."
(The reader will please to remember that Rubygill Abbey was