“Pardon my freedom, noble sirs,” he said, “but in these glades I am monarch⁠—they are my kingdom; and these my wild subjects would reck but little of my power, were I, within my own dominions, to yield place to mortal man.⁠—Now, sirs, who hath seen our chaplain? where is our curtal Friar? A mass amongst Christian men best begins a busy morning.”⁠—No one had seen the Clerk of Copmanhurst . “Over gods forbode!” said the outlaw chief, “I trust the jolly priest hath but abidden by the wine-pot a thought too late. Who saw him since the castle was ta’en?”

“I,” quoth the Miller, “marked him busy about the door of a cellar, swearing by each saint in the calendar he would taste the smack of Front-de-Boeuf’s Gascoigne wine.”

“Now, the saints, as many as there be of them,” said the Captain, “forefend, lest he has drunk too deep of the wine-butts, and perished by the fall of the castle!⁠—Away, Miller!⁠—take with you enow of men, seek the place where you last saw him⁠—throw water from the moat on the scorching ruins⁠—I will have them removed stone by stone ere I lose my curtal Friar.”