body and in heart, probably such a one as Chaucer tells us of 350
years after:--


"--A dagger hanging by a las hadde hee
About his nekke under his arm adoun.
The hote summer hadde made his hewe al broun.
And certainly he was a good felaw;
Full many a draught of wine he hadde draw,
From Burdeaux ward, while that the chapmen slepe,
Of nice conscience took he no kepe.
If that he fought, and hadde the higher hand,
By water he sent hem home to every land.
But of his craft to recken wel his tides,
His stremes and his strandes him besides,
His herberwe, his mone, and his lode manage,
There was none swiche, from Hull unto Carthage.
Hardy he was, and wise, I undertake:
With many a tempest hadde his berd be shake.
He knew wel alle the havens, as they were,
From Gotland to the Cape de Finisterre,
And every creke in Bretagne and in Spain."


But gradually there grew on the stout merchantman the thought that
there was something more to be done in the world than making money.
He became a pious man after the fashion of those days. He
worshipped at the famous shrine of St. Andrew. He worshipped, too,
at St. Cuthbert's hermitage at Farne, and there, he said afterwards,
he longed for the first time for the rest and solitude of the