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 north of Trent.) "His mettle will be tried," said Sir Ralph.

"There is many a courtier will swear to King Henry to bring him in dead or alive." "They must look to the brambles then," said brother Michael.
"The bramble, the bramble, the bonny forest bramble, Doth make a jest Of silken vest, That will through greenwood scramble: The bramble, the bramble, the bonny forest bramble." "Plague on your lungs, son Michael," said the abbot; "this is your old coil: always roaring in your cups." "I know what I say," said brother Michael; "there is often more sense in an old song than in a new homily.
The courtly pad doth amble, When his gay lord would ramble: But both may catch An awkward scratch, If they ride among the bramble: The bramble, the bramble, the bonny forest bramble." "Tall friar," said Sir Ralph, "either you shoot the shafts of your merriment at random, or you know more of the earl's designs than beseems your frock." "Let my frock," said brother Michael, "answer for its own sins.

It is worn past covering mine.

It is too weak for a shield, too transparent for a screen, too thin for a shelter, too light for gravity, and too threadbare for a jest.