“‘I am a friar,’ he shrieked.

“‘You lie,’ they replied, ‘for you go shod.’

“He awoke and threw the shoes out of the window.”

“And did he catch cold afterwards?”

Another smile.

“No, my son, all these things go by habit.”

“Shall I begin to leave off my shoes?”

“Not yet, your vocation is not settled.  You may yet choose the world.”

“I never shall.”

“Poor boy, you are young and cannot tell.  Perhaps before nightfall a different light may be thrown upon your good resolutions.”

A pause ensued.  At length Martin went on, “At least you have books.  I love books.”

“At first we had not even them, but later on the Holy Father thought that those who contend with the unbelieving learned should be learned themselves.  They who pour forth must suck in.”

“When did the Order come to Oxford?”

“Thirty years agone.  When we first landed at Dover we made our way to London, the home of commerce, and Oxford, the home of learning.  The two first gray brethren lost their way in the woods of Nuneham, on their road to the city, and afraid of the floods, which were out, and of the dark night, which made it difficult to avoid the water, took refuge in a grange, which belonged to the Abbey of Abingdon, where dwelt a small branch of the great Benedictine Brotherhood.  Their clothes were ragged and torn with thorns, and they only spoke broken English, so the monks took them for the travelling jugglers of the day, and welcomed them with great hospitality.  But after supper they all assembled in the common room, and bade the supposed jugglers show their craft.

“’We be not jugglers, we be poor brethren of our Lord and Saint Francis.’

“Now the monks were very jealous of the new Order, so unlike themselves, in its renunciation of ease and luxury, and in very spite they called them knaves and impostors, and kicked them out of doors.”

“What did they do?”

“They slept under a tree, and the angels comforted them.  The next day they got to Oxford and began their work.  The plague had been raging in the poorer quarters of the city, and they brought the joy of the Gospel to those miserable people.  At length their numbers increased, and they built this house wherein we dwell.”

In such conversation as this Martin passed a happy hour, then went to the first lecture he attended, in the schools attached to the friary, where the great works of Augustine and Aquinas formed the text books; no Creek as yet.  He passed from Latin to Logic, as the handmaid of theology.  The great thinker Aristotle supplied the method, not the language or matter, and became the ally of Christianity, under the rendering of a learned brother.

Then followed the noontide meal, a stroll with some younger companions of his own age, to whom he had been specially introduced, which led them so far afield that they only returned in time for the vesper service, at the friary.