“Tell him,” he said to Martin, “that fight I must, and tell him that shrive me he must, and that quickly. Tell him how the fellow met me in the wood below just now, and would have slain me there, unarmed as I was; and how, when I told him it was a shame to strike a naked man, he told me he would give me but one hour’s grace to go back, on the faith of a gentleman, for my armor and weapons, and meet him there again, to die by his hand. So shrive me quick, Sir Priest.” Hereward knelt down. Martin Lightfoot knelt down by him, and with a trembling voice began to interpret for him. “What does he say?” asked Hereward, as the priest murmured something to himself. “He said,” quoth Martin, now fairly blubbering, “that, fair and young as you are, your shrift should be as short and as clean as David’s.” Hereward was touched. “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. “And tell him,” continued Hereward, “that if I fall in this battle I give him all that money, that he may part it among the poor for the good of my soul.” “Pish!” said Martin to his lord; “that is paying him for having you killed. You should pay him for keeping you alive.” And without waiting for the answer, he spoke in Latin,-- “And if he comes back safe from this battle, he will give you ten pennies for yourself and your church, Priest, and therefore expects you to pray your very loudest while he is gone.”