It stood directly under
the window for the sake of light, for it served the good priest for both
table and chair; and on it he was sitting reading in his book at that
minute, the sunshine and the wind streaming in behind his head, doing no
good to his rheumatism of thirty years' standing.
"Is there a priest here?" asked Hereward, hurriedly.
The old man looked up, shook his head, and answered in Cornish.
"Speak to him in Latin, Martin! May be he will understand that."
Martin spoke. "My lord, here, wants a priest to shrive him, and that
quickly. He is going to fight the great tyrant Ironhook, as you call him."
"Ironhook?" answered the priest in good Latin enough. "And he so young!
God help him, he is a dead man! What is this,--a fresh soul sent to its
account by the hands of that man of Belial? Cannot he entreat him,--can he
not make peace, and save his young life? He is but a stripling, and that
man, like Goliath of old, a man of war from his youth up."
"And my master," said Martin Lightfoot, proudly, "is like young
David,--one that can face a giant and kill him; for he has slain, like
David, his lion and his bear ere now. At least, he is one that will
neither make peace, nor entreat the face of living man. So shrive him
quickly, Master Priest, and let him be gone to his work.
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