Father Fothergill was busy in the refectory trying conclusions with a venison pasty, when he received the summons of his patron to attend him in the chapel cemetery. Of course he lost no time in obeying it, for obedience was the general rule in Shurland Castle. If anybody ever said "I won't," it was the exception; and, like all other exceptions, only proved the rule the stronger. The Father was a friar of the Augustine persuasion; a brotherhood which, having been planted in Kent some few centuries earlier, had taken very kindly to the soil, and overspread the county much as hops did some few centuries later. He was plump and portly, a little thick-winded, especially after dinner,--stood five feet four in his sandals, and weighed hard upon eighteen stone. He was moreover a personage of singular piety; and the iron girdle, which, he said, he wore under his cassock to mortify withal, might have been well mistaken for the tire of a cart-wheel.--When he arrived, Sir Robert was pacing up and down by the side of a newly opened grave. "_Benedicite!_ fair son,"--(the Baron was as brown as a cigar,)--"_Benedicite!_" said the Chaplain. The Baron was too angry to stand upon compliment. "Bury me that grinning caitiff there!" quoth he, pointing to the defunct. "It may not be, fair son," said the Friar; "he hath perished without absolution." "Bury the body!" roared Sir Robert. "Water and earth alike reject him," returned the Chaplain; "holy St. Bridget herself--" "Bridget me no Bridgets!--do me thine office quickly, Sir Shaveling; or, by the Piper that played before Moses--" The oath was a fearful one; and whenever the Baron swore to do mischief, he was never known to perjure himself. He was playing with the hilt of his sword.--"Do me thine office, I say. Give him his passport to Heaven!" "He is already gone to Hell!" stammered the Friar. "Then do you go after him!" thundered the Lord of Shurland. His sword half leaped from its scabbard. No!--the trenchant blade, that had cut Suleiman Ben Malek Ben Buckskin from helmet to chine, disdained to daub itself with the cerebellum of a miserable monk;--it leaped back again;--and as the Chaplain, scared at its flash, turned him in terror, the Baron gave him a kick!--one kick!--it was but one!--but such a one! Despite its obesity, up flew his holy body in an angle of forty-five degrees; then, having reached its highest point of elevation, sunk headlong into the open grave that yawned to receive it. If the reverend gentleman had possessed such a thing as a neck, he had infallibly broken it; as he did not, he only dislocated his vertebræ,--but that did quite as well. He was as dead as ditch-water! "In with the other rascal!" said the Baron,--and he was obeyed; for there he stood in his boots. Mattock and shovel made short work of it; twenty feet of superincumbent mould pressed down alike the saint and the sinner. "Now sing a requiem who list!" said the Baron, and his lordship went back to his oysters.