"Oh," said the woodman, "as for my language, I have seen courts, and am courtly. Why, I was for several years a lackey to a great man; but my preferment was spoiled by the jealousy of other lackeys, so, to save myself from worse, I ran away and betook myself to the woods and wilds; but I can be as delicate and mincing as a serving maid should need be, and as full of courtesies as a queen's ape. I am like every widow of sixty, and like every parson in rusty black without a parish; I have had my sorrows and seen my best days, which makes me at times melancholic; but I haven't forgot my gentility, when it suits my turn, nor the choice words which one perfunctorily gathers up in courts." All this was said in a bitter and sneering manner, as if he made a mockery of the very acquirements he boasted of; and Lord Chartley replied: "By my faith, I believe your last trade is honester than your first, my good friend. However, get your supper, and tell me in the mean while, in plain English, what you think all this will come to." The woodman took down a large bowl from a shelf on the one side of the room, and poured a part of the milk that it contained into an iron pot. This he suspended over the fire, by a hook which hung dangling over the blaze, and when the milk began to boil, scattered a handful of oatmeal in it, stirring it round at the same time, till it was of a tolerable thick consistency. Upon this mess, when he had removed it from the fire and placed it on the table, he poured the rest of the milk cold. But it must not be supposed that all this time he had refrained from speaking. On the contrary, in brief and broken sentences, he replied to the young nobleman's question, saying, "What will become of it? Why, simply Richard's bands will be down about the abbey in an hour or two, and will search every corner of it--or set it on fire, perchance, or any thing else that they please to do." "They will hardly dare, I think," said Lord Chartley. "This abbey, I am told, has the privilege of sanctuary, and if King Richard has a quality on earth, on which he can justly pride himself, it is his strictness in repressing the lawless violence which has risen up in times of long and fierce contention."