“There is a monastery near by,” said I, “and the head thereof is a good friend of ours.  Let us, if possible, gain that shelter, and cast ourselves on the kindness of the good Abbot Tobias.”

“Aye,” said the Prince, urging his horse to speed, “but will we ever get there?”

Then I called myself all the stupid-heads in the world, because I had not refused to go a foot with the Prince on such a mad venture, and so put our future and that of the Princedom of Plassenburg in such peril.

But there at last were the gray walls and high towers of the Abbey of Wolgast.  Our pursuers were not yet in sight, so we rode in at the gate and cast our bridles to a lay brother of the order, crying imperiously for instant audience of the Abbot.

As soon as my friend Tobias saw us he threw up his hands in a rapture of welcome.  But I soon had him advertised of our great danger.  Whereupon he went directly to the window of his chamber of reception and looked out on the court-yard.

“Ring the abbey bell for full service,” he commanded; “throw open the outer gates and great doors, and lead these horses to the secret crypt beneath the mortuary chapel.”

For the Abbot Tobias was a man of the readiest resource, and in other circumstances would have made a good soldier.

He hurried us off to the robing-rooms, and made us put on monastic and priestly garments over our several apparels.  Never, Got wot, had I expected that I should be transformed into a rope-girt praying clerk.  But so it was.  I was given a square black cap and a brown robe, and sent to join the lay brethren.  For my hair grew thick as a mat on top and there was no time to tonsure it.

Now, Dessauer being bald and quite practicable as to his topknot, they endued him with the full dress of a monk.  But at that time I saw not what was done with the Prince.  For my conductor, a laughing, frolicsome lad, came for me and carried me off all in good faith, telling me the while that he hoped we should lodge together.  There were, he whispered, certain very fair and pleasant-spoken maids just over the wall, that which you could climb easily enough by the branches of the pear-tree that grew contiguous at the south corner.

As we hurried towards the chapel, the monks were streaming out of their cells in great consternation, grumbling like soldiers at an unexpected parade.

“What hath gotten into our old man?” said one.  “Hath he overeaten at mid-day refection, and so is not able to sleep, that he cannot let honest men enjoy greater peace than himself?”

“What folly!” cried another; “as if we had not prayers enough, without cheating the Almighty by knocking him up at uncanonical hours!”

“And the choir summoned, and full choral service, no less!  Not even a respectable saint’s day—­no true churchman indeed, but some heretic of a Greek fellow!” quoth a third.