"Anything but that," said he, smiting on his breast,
"Mea culpa,--mea culpa,--mea maxima culpa."
"Tell him how I robbed my father."
The priest groaned as Martin did so.
"And how I mocked at my mother, and left her in a rage, without ever a
kind word between us. And how I have slain I know not how many men in
battle, though that, I trust, need not lay heavily on my soul, seeing that
I killed them all in fair fight."
Again the priest groaned.
"And how I robbed a certain priest of his money and gave it away to my
housecarles."
Here the priest groaned more bitterly still.
"O my son! my son! where hast thou found time to lay all these burdens on
thy young soul?"
"It will take less time," said Martin, bluntly, "for you to take the
burdens off again."
"But I dare not absolve him for robbing a priest. Heaven Help him! He must
go to the bishop for that. He is more fit to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem
than to battle."
"He has no time," quoth Martin, "for bishops or Jerusalem."
"Tell him," says Hereward, "that in this purse is all I have, that in it
he will find sixty silver pennies, beside two strange coins of gold."
"Sir Priest," said Martin Lightfoot, taking the purse from Hereward, and
keeping it in his own hand, "there are in this bag moneys."
Martin had no mind to let the priest into the secret of the state of their
finances.
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