“Dear kinsman,” said the Abbot to his nephew, “I have a request to prefer which I hope you will grant, though it deprive you of one retainer.  This sweet youth is not fit company for rude soldiers and ill-bred rufflers of the camp.  His mind is already on higher things.  He hath good clerkly Latin also, being skilled in the humanities, as I have heard proven with mine own ears.  His grace of language and deportment is manifest, and he can sing the sweetest and most spiritual songs in praise of Mary and the saints.  I would have him in our choir at Sweetheart Abbey, where we have much need both of a voice such as his, and also of a youth whose sanctity and innocence cannot fail to leaven with the grace of the spirit the neophytes of our college, and the consideration of whom may even bring repentance into older and more hardened hearts.”

Malise MacKim could not believe his ears as he listened to the Abbot’s rounded periods.  But all the same his grey eyes twinkled, his mouth slowly drew itself together into the shape of an O, from which issued a long low whistle, perfectly audible to all about him except the Abbot.  “Lord have mercy on the innocence and cloistered quiet of the neophytes if they get our Laurie for an example!” muttered Malise to himself as he turned away.

Even the young Earl smiled, perhaps remembering the last time he had seen the youth beside him, clutching and tearing like a wild cat at his brother’s throat in the smithy of Carlinwark.

“You desire the life of a clerk?” said Lord William pleasantly to Laurence.  He would gladly have purchased his uncle’s silence at even greater price.

“If your lordship pleases,” said Laurence, meekly, adding to himself, “it cannot be such hard work as hammering at the forge, and if I like it not, why then I can always run away.”

“You think you have a call to become a holy clerk?”

“I feel it here,” quoth Master Laurence, hypocritically, indicating correctly, however, the organ whose wants have made clerks of so many—­that is, the stomach.

Earl William smiled yet more broadly, but anxious to be gone he said:  “Mine Uncle, here is the lad’s father, Malise MacKim, my master armourer and right good servant.  Ask him concerning his son.”

“’Tis all up a rotten tree now,” muttered Laurence to himself; “my father will reveal all.”

Malise MacKim smiled grimly, but with a salutation to the dignitary of the church and near relative of his chief, he said:  “Truly, I had never thought of this my son as worthy to be a holy clerk.  But I will not stand in the way of his advancement nor thwart your favour.  Take him for a year on trial, and if you can make a monk of him, do so and welcome.  I recommend a leathern strap, well hardened in the fire, for the purpose of encouraging him to make a beginning in the holy life.”

“He shall indeed have penance if he need it.  For the good of the soul must the body suffer!” said Abbot William, sententiously.