After that interview at the Cross, Agnes often met the Black Friar. Sometimes he passed her with a simple blessing in answer to her reverence; but more frequently he stopped her, and inquired into her spiritual welfare. She had many a difficulty in which to ask his counsel; many a trouble in which it was a relief to seek (and always to find) his sympathy. He was the only friend she had who spoke the language of Canaan. And it was far less as a priest than as a friend that Agnes regarded him. He was as different from old Father Dan, the Cordelier, as Mistress Flint differed from Mistress Winter. Agnes never knew, when preparing for one of those abhorred periodical interviews with the Cordelier, what he might say to her, or rather, what he might not say. She shrank with horror from his inquisitive questioning, and not much less from his petty humiliating penances. Father Dan's remedy for angry words was to fast for a week on bread and water; for pride, to lick a cross in the dust of the church floor; for envy and covetousness, the administration of a cat-o'-nine-tails on the shoulders. The Black Friar, on the contrary, led Agnes out of herself altogether. He had only one topic, of infinite variety, for it was Jesus Christ. Only once had Agnes asked him whether he would recommend her to administer "the discipline" to herself, as a cure for discontent and murmuring. "If thy shoulders be discontented, why, by all means," answered Friar Laurence, with his grave smile; "but if it be thine heart that murmureth, wherefore chastise thy shoulders?" Agnes never put the question again, and never had recourse to the discipline. Of fasting, poor girl, she had already too much for her bodily profit, without any adventitious use of it. And when she began to pray in reality, the rosary was very soon dropped. When a man's heart is in earnest, to keep count of his words is not possible.