The White Company | Page 8

Alleyne Edricson bent his head while the Abbot poured out his heartfelt
supplication that Heaven would watch over this young soul, now going
forth into the darkness and danger of the world. It was no mere form for
either of them. To them the outside life of mankind did indeed seem to
be one of violence and of sin, beset with physical and still more with
spiritual danger. Heaven, too, was very near to them in those days.
God's direct agency was to be seen in the thunder and the rainbow, the
whirlwind and the lightning. To the believer, clouds of angels and
confessors, and martyrs, armies of the sainted and the saved, were ever
stooping over their struggling brethren upon earth, raising, encouraging,
and supporting them. It was then with a lighter heart and a stouter
courage that the young man turned from the Abbot's room, while the
latter, following him to the stair-head, finally commended him to the
protection of the holy Julian, patron of travellers.
Underneath, in the porch of the Abbey, the monks had gathered to give
him a last God-speed. Many had brought some parting token by which
he should remember them. There was brother Bartholomew with a
crucifix of rare carved ivory, and brother Luke with a white-backed
psalter adorned with golden bees, and brother Francis with the "Slaying
of the Innocents" most daintily set forth upon vellum. All these were
duly packed away deep in the traveller's scrip, and above them old
pippin-faced brother Athanasius had placed a parcel of simnel bread
and rammel cheese, with a small flask of the famous blue-sealed Abbey
wine. So, amid hand-shakings and laughings and blessings, Alleyne

Edricson turned his back upon Beaulieu.
At the turn of the road he stopped and gazed back. There was the
wide-spread building which he knew so well, the Abbot's house, the
long church, the cloisters with their line of arches, all bathed and
mellowed in the evening sun. There too was the broad sweep of the
river Exe, the old stone well, the canopied niche of the Virgin, and in
the centre of all the cluster of white-robed figures who waved their
hands to him. A sudden mist swam up before the young man's eyes,
and he turned away upon his journey with a heavy heart and a choking
throat.

CHAPTER III.
HOW HORDLE JOHN COZENED THE FULLER OF LYMINGTON.
It is not, however, in the nature of things that a lad of twenty, with
young life glowing in his veins and all the wide world before him,
should spend his first hours of freedom in mourning for what he had
left. Long ere Alleyne was out of sound of the Beaulieu bells he was
striding sturdily along, swinging his staff and whistling as merrily as
the birds in the thicket. It was an evening to raise a man's heart. The
sun shining slantwise through the trees threw delicate traceries across
the road, with bars of golden light between. Away in the distance
before and behind, the green boughs, now turning in places to a
coppery redness, shot their broad arches across the track. The still
summer air was heavy with the resinous smell of the great forest. Here
and there a tawny brook prattled out from among the underwood and
lost itself again in the ferns and brambles upon the further side. Save
the dull piping of insects and the sough of the leaves, there was silence
everywhere--the sweet restful silence of nature.
And yet there was no want of life--the whole wide wood was full of it.
Now it was a lithe, furtive stoat which shot across the path upon some
fell errand of its own; then it was a wild cat which squatted upon the
outlying branch of an oak and peeped at the traveller with a yellow and

dubious eye. Once it was a wild sow which scuttled out of the bracken,
with two young sounders at her heels, and once a lordly red staggard
walked daintily out from among the tree trunks, and looked around him
with the fearless gaze of one who lived under the King's own high
protection. Alleyne gave his staff a merry flourish, however, and the
red deer bethought him that the King was far off, so streaked away
from whence he came.
The youth had now journeyed considerably beyond the furthest
domains of the Abbey. He was the more surprised therefore when, on
coming round a turn in the path, he perceived a man clad in the familiar
garb of the order, and seated in a clump of heather by the roadside.
Alleyne had known every brother well, but this was a face which was
new to him--a face which was very red and puffed, working this way
and that, as