“It’s twelve years—­ay, twelve,” said Giles, reckoning the lapse on his fingers; “I know it by the great wind that beat down Master Markland’s barn wall at the Meadows, since Cliderhow’s sermon, inciting the whole parish to rebellion.”

“I know it,” replied the palmer:  “he was in prison when I last knew of the matter.”

“Ay, ay,” returned Giles knowingly; “but threescore marks, disbursed discreetly to our good and loyal burgesses, made the doors as easy to open as my wicket—­that is, at timely hours, ye understand.”

“Is he at large?” inquired the other.

“They say he bides at Haigh,” answered Boniface, “roistering it with that Welsh knight there, Sir Osmund Neville.  I warrant Sir William’s substance runs gaily down the old parson’s throat.”

Here the palmer threw the hood over his brows.  Suddenly he arose:  striding across the chamber with considerable speed, he twice repeated the name of Sir Osmund Neville in a subdued tone, but with a bitterness of spirit that ill accorded with the outward habit of meekness which he had assumed.

“Giles Dauber! what keeps ye so long there a-gossiping?” shouted a shrill voice from above.  It was the vocal substitute of Mistress Dauber, who, resolutely determined not to budge at her husband’s bidding, had, as she lay, listened, but to little purpose.  Finding it was no everyday guest, she crept to the ladder-head and gave ear for a while; but soon discovering it to be an unthrifty sort of intercourse that was going on, not likely to bring either gain or good-will to the house, and fearing that Giles might fall into some snare from his ready-mouthed opinions regarding the unsettled temper and aspect of the time, she thought fit to break abruptly on the discourse ere it should lead to some dangerous or forbidden subject.  He had, however, hit upon a favourite topic, in addition to which, he was now evidently loth to leave his guest ere he had learnt the nature of his errand to these parts.  An “o’er-sea pilgrim,” as they were generally styled, was too choice an arrival for a petty hostel—­especially in those times, when newspapers and posts were not circulating daily and hourly through the land—­to let slip an opportunity of inquiring about the king of Scotland, as Robert Bruce was then called, or about his majesty, the Sultan Solyman—­two personages who were very frequently confounded with each other in mine host’s political hemisphere, and whose realms formed the great pandemonium whence issued all that was dire and disastrous to plague and perplex unhappy England.

“To bed! to bed!—­Thou art ready enough to rise when thou art not bidden.  To bed, I say!” angrily shouted the disturbed Benedict.

“Hast thou a wife?” sternly inquired the pilgrim.

“A wife!—­marry have I!” exclaimed Giles; “and here she comes.”