A Monk of Fife | Page 6

heads. They were but a wild set of lads, for, as then, there was not,
as now there is, a house appointed for scholars to dwell in together
under authority. We wore coloured clothes, and our hair long; gold
chains, and whingers {3} in our belts, all of which things are now most

righteously forbidden. But I carried no whinger on the links, as
considering that it hampered a man in his play. So the game went on,
now Dickon leading "by a hole," as they say, and now myself, and
great wagers were laid on us.
Now, at the hole that is set high above the Eden, whence you see far
over the country, and the river-mouth, and the shipping, it chanced that
my ball lay between Dickon's and the hole, so that he could in no
manner win past it.
"You laid me that stimy of set purpose," cried Dickon, throwing down
his club in a rage; "and this is the third time you have done it in this
game."
"It is clean against common luck," quoth one of his party, "and the
game and the money laid on it should be ours."
"By the blessed bones of the Apostle," I said, 'no luck is more common.
To-day to me, to-morrow to thee! Lay it of purpose, I could not if I
would."
"You lie!" he shouted in a rage, and gripped to his whinger.
It was ever my father's counsel that I must take the lie from none.
Therefore, as his steel was out, and I carried none, I made no more ado,
and the word of shame had scarce left his lips when I felled him with
the iron club that we use in sand.
"He is dead!" cried they of his party, while the lads of my own looked
askance on me, and had manifestly no mind to be partakers in my deed.
Now, Melville came of a great house, and, partly in fear of their feud,
partly like one amazed and without any counsel, I ran and leaped into a
boat that chanced to lie convenient on the sand, and pulled out into the
Eden. Thence I saw them raise up Melville, and bear him towards the
town, his friends lifting their hands against me, with threats and
malisons. His legs trailed and his head wagged like the legs and the
head of a dead man, and I was without hope in the world.
At first it was my thought to row up the river-mouth, land, and make
across the marshes and fields to our house at Pitcullo. But I bethought
me that my father was an austere man, whom I had vexed beyond
bearing with my late wicked follies, into which, since the death of my
mother, I had fallen. And now I was bringing him no college prize, but
a blood-feud, which he was like to find an ill heritage enough, even
without an evil and thankless son. My stepmother, too, who loved me

little, would inflame his anger against me. Many daughters he had, and
of gear and goods no more than enough. Robin, my elder brother, he
had let pass to France, where he served among the men of John
Kirkmichael, Bishop of Orleans--he that smote the Duke of Clarence in
fair fight at Bauge.
Thinking of my father, and of my stepmother's ill welcome, and of
Robin, abroad in the wars against our old enemy of England, it may be
that I fell into a kind of half dream, the boat lulling me by its movement
on the waters. Suddenly I felt a crashing blow on my head. It was as if
the powder used for artillery had exploded in my mouth, with flash of
light and fiery taste, and I knew nothing. Then, how long after I could
not tell, there was water on my face, the blue sky and the blue tide were
spinning round--they spun swiftly, then slowly, then stood still. There
was a fierce pain stounding in my head, and a voice said -
"That good oar-stroke will learn you to steal boats!"
I knew the voice; it was that of a merchant sailor-man with whom, on
the day before, I had quarrelled in the market-place. Now I was lying at
the bottom of a boat which four seamen, who had rowed up to me and
had broken my head as I meditated, were pulling towards a
merchant-vessel, or carrick, in the Eden-mouth. Her sails were being
set; the boat wherein I lay was towing that into which I had leaped after
striking down Melville. For two of the ship's men, being on shore, had
hailed their fellows in the carrick, and they had taken vengeance upon
me.
"You scholar lads must be taught better than your