"For your lover," said the baron, "you may give God thanks of him.
He is as arrant a knave as ever poached."

"What, for hunting the king's deer?" said Matilda. "Have I not heard
you rail at the forest laws by the hour?"

"Did you ever hear me," said the baron, "rail myself out of house and land?
If I had done that, then were I a knave."

"My lover," said Matilda, "is a brave man, and a true man, and a generous man,
and a young man, and a handsome man; aye, and an honest man too."

"How can he be an honest man," said the baron, "when he has neither
house nor land, which are the better part of a man?"

"They are but the husk of a man," said Matilda, "the worthless coat
of the chesnut: the man himself is the kernel."

"The man is the grape stone," said the baron, "and the pulp of the melon.
The house and land are the true substantial fruit, and all that give him
savour and value."

"He will never want house or land," said Matilda, "while the meeting
boughs weave a green roof in the wood, and the free range of the hart
marks out the bounds of the forest."

"Vert and venison! vert and venison!" exclaimed the baron.
"Treason and flat rebellion. Confound your smiling face!
what makes you look so good-humoured? What! you think I can't