The woman sprang up, furious, chattering, beside herself, a knife in her fist. “Let the jade rot, I say. You are my man and I’m your woman. By the blood of the——!” Father Merlin rose up and put himself between them. He was a big man, and had a voice that could thunder. “Peace, you fools. Swashbuckler, sit you down and cool that hot pot of a head of yours. As for you, Dame Blanche——” She snarled at him insolently, her large white face like a lewd mask. “I have a tongue, mind you. I have a tongue!” Merlin went close to her, and she alone saw his eyes. “Peace, or you may have no tongue to boast of.” The insolence went out of her, and she cringed and slunk away. “I meant nothing, good father; but that fool there is my man, and I’ll not see him filched from me.” “Peace!” John Ball had sat through the squabble with the look of a man whose soul was elsewhere. He turned his head slowly and stared at Father Merlin. “My brother, what shall be done?” The Franciscan sneered. “Leave it to me, Brother John. I will go out to-morrow—to hear confessions.” CHAPTER V Father Merlin set out betimes on a fine spring morning, a hunch of bread in his wallet and his beads hanging down over his grey frock. Father Merlin walked with his head thrown back, and his beak of a nose with its hungry nostrils sniffing the freshness of the morning; for the forest was in a joyous mood and the birds were singing in every bush and tree. The friar’s grey habit brushed the dew from the grass and heather. Rabbits scampered to cover. The primroses were dwindling, but the wild hyacinths were blue in the woods, and the blackthorn hung white against the sky. The soft bloom of a misty morning lay over the forest, deepening towards the grey chalk hills by the southern sea, and filling the valleys with a film of silver smoke. Life cried out lustily with the voice of desire. Green buds were bursting; the great hills seemed swollen with the mystery of birth; the birds were coming from the lands of the sun, and the wryneck complained in the oak boughs, and from the deep woods a cuckoo called. “Joy, joy, joy,” sang the blackbirds. Woodlarks hovered and thrilled, dust motes of melody dancing in the sunlight. Half a furlong ahead of Father Merlin went a little hobbling figure in rags, prodding the earth with the point of a staff, for the Polecat had trudged ahead to show the grey friar the way. Merlin’s eyes watched this forerunner of his with cynical complacency. Such creatures were very useful when a man of God could send them down to hell and then tweak them back again at the end of an absolution. Father Merlin was no clumsy, tumultuous bully; his voice had many modulations; he could be as quiet as death and as persevering as a badger.