Fair day was to be a special holiday that year because of the Coronation. Reuben at first thought that he would not goit was always maddening to see the booths and shows crowding over his Canaan, and circumstances would make his feelings on this occasion ten times more bitter. But he had never missed the Fair except for some special reason, such as a funeral or an auction, and he felt that if he stayed away it might be put down to low spirits at his son's desertion, or, worse still, to his old age.
ONE:"What! the audacious monk who thrice entered this castle to insult its lord?""Master Calverley, I will tell you truly," answered Mary, in a voice scarcely audible from its tremor. "You have been our best friend, and you would not see me hung? It was all a mistakeI am sure I wouldn't hurt a hair of the dear creature's head." And here the feelings of woman so far prevailed, that she shed some disinterested tears.
ONE:"Fear not me, Margaretfear not that I would add to the grief which has weighed on your heart, and paled your cheek, and dimmed your eye. Fear not that I would add one sorrow to the only being who attaches me to my kind, and who tells me I am not entirely alone! But, I ask you, Margaret, not as a servant of the High God, but as an only brotheras one who has loved you as a father, and has watched over you from infancy even until now; I ask you to tell me what you know of that child?"
TWO:"It wur a pr?aper death," continued Pete; "his soul wur washed as white as wool. He wur the prodigal son come h?ame; he wur the Lord's lost sixpence, I reckon."
TWO:"Peace! Sir Robert," said Sudbury."What have you to suggest which may benefit the realm, sir leader?" he continued.It was a fair morning in the June succeeding Holgrave's marriage, that Sudley castle presented a greater degree of splendour than it had exhibited for some years before. Roland de Boteler had wedded a noble maiden, and it was expected that the castle would that day be graced by the presence of its future mistress.
THREE:The next morning the monk was summoned before the abbot; and with the same calm and dignified demeanor that generally characterized him, he obeyed the summons. The two brethren who had conducted him from Gray's cottage, stood at the table, and the abbot proceeded to say, that upon the oath of a respectable witness, he had been observed conversing with an excommunicated woman, and accompanying her to her house, and that those two brethren (pointing to the officers) were ready to avow they had beheld him leave it. "Now," continued Sudbury, "what have you to say? Did you converse with the woman?"
THREE:"No, steward," said the spokesman of the smiths, "you are no prisoneryou are at liberty to go as soon as you like; and I would advise you, as a friend, to go quickly, for we men of the forest are not like your Sudley folk." Calverley, in some measure, re-assured by the unexpected mildness of this reply, quickly said,
