Martin spoke. "My lord, here, wants a priest to shrive him, and that
quickly. He is going to fight the great tyrant Ironhook, as you call him."

"Ironhook?" answered the priest in good Latin enough. "And he so young!
God help him, he is a dead man! What is this,--a fresh soul sent to its
account by the hands of that man of Belial? Cannot he entreat him,--can he
not make peace, and save his young life? He is but a stripling, and that
man, like Goliath of old, a man of war from his youth up."

"And my master," said Martin Lightfoot, proudly, "is like young
David,--one that can face a giant and kill him; for he has slain, like
David, his lion and his bear ere now. At least, he is one that will
neither make peace, nor entreat the face of living man. So shrive him
quickly, Master Priest, and let him be gone to his work."

Poor Martin Lightfoot spoke thus bravely only to keep up his spirits and
his young lord's; for, in spite of his confidence in Hereward's prowess,
he had given him up for a lost man: and the tears ran down his rugged
cheeks, as the old priest, rising up and seizing Hereward's two hands in
his, besought him, with the passionate and graceful eloquence of his race,
to have mercy upon his own youth.

Hereward understood his meaning, though not his words.

"Tell him," he said to Martin, "that fight I must, and tell him that
shrive me he must, and that quickly. Tell him how the fellow met me in the
wood below just now, and would have slain me there, unarmed as I was; and
how, when I told him it was a shame to strike a naked man, he told me he
would give me but one hour's grace to go back, on the faith of a