Maid Marian

peace here, or

CO

of a fine trout-stream, and in the midst of woodland coverts, abounding with excellent game. The bride, with her father and attendant maidens, entered the chapel; but the earl had not arrived. The baron was amazed, and the bridemaidens were disconcerted. Matilda feared that some evil had befallen her lover, but felt no diminution of her confidence in his honour and love. Through the open gates of the chapel she looked down the narrow road that wound along the side of the hill; and her ear was the first that heard the distant tramplin

rking his musical air-pump with one hand, and with two fingers and a thumb of the other insinuating a peeping-place through the curtain of the organ-gallery, was struck motionless by the double operation of curiosity and fear; while the organist, intent only on his performance, and spreading all his fingers to strike a swell of magnificent chords, felt his harmonic spirit ready to desert his body on being answered by the ghastly rattle of empty keys, and in the consequent agitato furioso of the internal movements of his feelings, was pr

tween the lovers, as if to emblem that royal authority which laid its temporal ban upon their contract. The earl drew his own sword instantly, and struck down the interposing weapon; then clasped his left arm round Matilda, who sprang into his embrace, and held his sword before her with his right hand. His yeomen ranged themselves at his side, and stood with t

o the Earl of Huntingdon, whose lands touch the Ouse and

om," answered Matilda firmly, "but

y saint, our Lady, who will yet bring us together. Lord Fitzwater, to your care, for the present, I commit your daughter.-N

bowmen at the door sent in among the assailants a volley of arrows, one of which whizzed past the ear of the abbot, who, in mortal fear of being suddenly translated from a ghostly friar into a friarly ghost, began to roll out of the chapel as fast as his bulk and his holy robes would permit, roaring "Sacrilege!" with all his monks at his heels, who were, like himself, more intent to go at once than to stand upon the order of their going. The abbot, thus pressed from behind, and stumbling over his own drapery before, fell suddenly prostrate in the door-way that connected the chapel with the abbey, and was instantaneously buried under a pyramid of ghostly carcasses, that fell over him and each other, and lay a rolling chaos of animated rotundities, s

s saddle, clapped spurs to his horse, rallied his men on the first eminence, and exchanged his sword for a bow and arrow, with which he did old execution among the pursuers, who at last thought it most expedient to desist from offensive

from noon till night. The peaceful brethren, unused to the tumult of war, had undergone, from fear and discomposure, an exhaustion of animal spirits that requ

by contempt of the king's mandates, and by armed resistance to his power, in defiance of all authority; and combined with it the resolute withholding of payment of certain moneys to the abbo

und oily friar, appropriating the port

iar whom we have already mentioned in the cha

ael," said the little round friar, "to

led and filled his cup. "He will draw the long bow," pursu

the sound of the arrow still whizzing in his ear: "wha

d Sir Ralph, "he is an o

a heavier miss of him than he will have of the law. He will strike as much veni

ittle friar. "I hope he won't

tridges, he will strike them under your nose (here's to you)

ve us on fast-day,"

he game I mean," s

, "you do not mean to insinuate that

rents and beeves without his consent, he must take beeves and rents where

sorry for the damsel: she see

ad girl," said t

Has she not beauty, grace, wit, sense, di

e to her husband, and faith in her confessor, and domesticity, or, as learned doctors call it, the faculty of stayathomeitiveness, and embroidery, and music, and pickling, and preserving, and the whole complex and multiplex detail

usehold, the fairest pillar of her hall, and the sweetest blossom of her bower: having, in all opposite proposings, sense to understand, judgment to weigh, discretion to choose, firmness to undertake, diligence to conduct, perseverance to accomplish, and resolution to maintain. For obedience to

; "I call it destroying. Call you it pickling? Tr

server, the true aurum potabile, the universal panacea for all

lady be half what you describe, she must be a paragon: bu

iar, "and draw the long bow, and pl

erving-man's head for spilling gravy on her ruff, but with such womanly grace and temperate self-

more nearly. That madcap earl found me other

ourteen earls on this side Trent, and any seven on the other." (The r

. "There is many a courtier will swear to

he brambles then," s

bramble, the bon

make

lken

rough greenw

bramble, the bonn

" said the abbot; "this is your old

ichael; "there is often more sense

ly pad do

ay lord wo

th may

ward s

de among t

bramble, the bonn

e shafts of your merriment at random, or you know

o weak for a shield, too transparent for a screen, too thin for a shelter, too light for gravity, and t

does the she

season shea

be warm though

e a new clo