’I scarce know whether as a devout Christian I should listen to that, friend,’ Farina mildly remonstrated.  ’Lilies are indeed emblems of the saints; but then they are not poor flowers of earth, being transfigured, lustrous unfadingly.  Oh, Cross and Passion! with what silver serenity thy glory enwraps me, gazing on these fair bells!  I look on the white sea of the saints.  I am enamoured of fleshly anguish and martyrdom.  All beauty is that worn by wan-smiling faces wherein Hope sits as a crown on Sorrow, and the pale ebb of mortal life is the twilight of joy everlasting.  Colourless peace!  Oh, my beloved!  So walkest thou for my soul on the white sea ever at night, clad in the straight fall of thy spotless virgin linen; bearing in thy hand the lily, and leaning thy cheek to it, where the human rose is softened to a milky bloom of red, the espousals of heaven with earth; over thee, moving with thee, a wreath of sapphire stars, and the solitude of purity around!’

‘Ah!’ sighed the Goshawk, dandling his flower-pot; ’the moon gives strokes as well’s the sun.  I’ faith, moon-struck and maid-struck in one!  He’ll be asking for his head soon.  This dash of the monk and the minstrel is a sure sign.  That ’s their way of loving in this land:  they all go mad, straight off.  I never heard such talk.’

Guy accompanied these remarks with a pitiful glance at his companion.

’Come, Sir Lover! lend me a help to give back what we’ve borrowed to its rightful owner.  ’S blood! but I feel an appetite.  This night-air takes me in the wind like a battering ram.  I thought I had laid in a stout four-and-twenty hours’ stock of Westphalian Wurst at Master Groschen’s supper-table.  Good stuff, washed down with superior Rhine wine; say your Liebfrauenmilch for my taste; though, when I first tried it, I grimaced like a Merry-Andrew, and remembered roast beef and Glo’ster ale in my prayers.’

The Goshawk was in the act of replacing the pot of lilies, when a blow from a short truncheon, skilfully flung, struck him on the neck and brought him to the ground.  With him fell the lilies.  He glared to the right and left, and grasped the broken flower-pot for a return missile; but no enemy was in view to test his accuracy of aim.

The deep-arched doorways showed their empty recesses the windows slept.

‘Has that youth played me false?’ thought the discomfited squire, as he leaned quietly on his arm.  Farina was nowhere near.

Guy was quickly reassured.

’By my fay, now! that’s a fine thing! and a fine fellow! and a fleet foot!  That lad ’ll rise!  He’ll be a squire some day.  Look at him.  Bowels of a’Becket! ’tis a sight!  I’d rather see that, now, than old Groschen ’s supper-table groaning with Wurst again, and running a river of Rudesheimer!  Tussle on!  I’ll lend a hand if there’s occasion; but you shall have the honour, boy, an you can win it.’

This crying on of the hound was called forth by a chase up the street, in which the Goshawk beheld Farina pursue and capture a stalwart runaway, who refused with all his might to be brought back, striving every two and three of his tiptoe steps to turn against the impulse Farina had got on his neck and nether garments.