"Get thine iron pot on thy head, then, sir knight," said the hermit, "while I remove these pewter flagons." He struck up a thundering [v]_De profundis clamavi_, under cover of which he removed the apparatus of their banquet, while the knight, laughing heartily and arming himself all the while, assisted his host with his voice from time to time as his mirth permitted. "What devil's [v]matins are you after at this hour?" demanded a voice from outside. "Heaven forgive you, sir traveler!" said the hermit, whose own noise prevented him from recognizing accents which were tolerably familiar to him. "Wend on your way, in the name of God and Saint Dunstan, and disturb not the devotions of me and my holy brother." "Mad priest," answered the voice from without; "open to Locksley!" "All's safe--all's right," said the hermit to his companion. "But who is he?" asked the Black Knight. "It imports me much to know." "Who is he?" answered the hermit. "I tell thee he is a friend." "But what friend?" persisted the knight; "for he may be a friend to thee and none of mine." "What friend?" replied the hermit; "that now is one of the questions that is more easily asked than answered." "Well, open the door," ordered the knight, "before he beat it from its hinges." The hermit speedily unbolted his portal and admitted Locksley, with his two companions. "Why, hermit," was the yeoman's first question as soon as he beheld the knight, "what boon companion hast thou here?" "A brother of our order," replied the friar, shaking his head; "we have been at our devotions all night." "He is a monk of the church militant," answered Locksley; "and there be more of them abroad. I tell thee, friar, thou must lay down the [v]rosary and take up the [v]quarter-staff; we shall need every one of our merry men, whether clerk or layman. But," he added, taking a step aside, "art thou mad--to give admittance to a knight thou dost not know? Hast thou forgotten our agreement?" "Good yeoman," said the knight, coming forward, "be not wroth with my merry host. He did but afford me the hospitality which I would have compelled from him if he had refused it." "Thou compel!" cried the friar. "Wait but till I have changed this gray gown for a green cassock, and if I make not a quarter-staff ring twelve upon thy pate, I am neither true clerk nor good woodsman." While he spoke thus he stript off his gown and appeared in a close buckram doublet and lower garment, over which he speedily did on a cassock of green and hose of the same color. "I pray thee [v]truss my points," he said to Wamba, "and thou shalt have a cup of sack for thy labor." "[v]Gramercy for thy sack," returned Wamba; "but thinkest thou that it is lawful for me to aid you to transmew thyself from a holy hermit into a sinful forester?" So saying, he accommodated the friar with his assistance in tying the endless number of points, as the laces which attached the hose to the doublet were then termed.