Max Pemberton

“ Here were great gnarled oaks and groves of yoke-elms; undulating sweeps of the finest grass land all carpeted with violets; pools deep down in the shady glades; even beaches of the finest yellow sand, where the brooklets made music in their pebbly beds. But the Jesuit had eyes for none of these things. He stood at the glen's head, motionless, irresolute, perhaps even fearful. A small company of mounted men had debouched from the opposite wood; and seeing him, one of their number set spurs to the beast he rode and galloped furiously across the grass. ”

“ Insensible to the wooing music of the gushing cascade, or to that stillness which had come upon all nature as the heat of the day fell, he maintained a fine rigidity of posture as he sat upright upon a boulder of stone, and bent his whole soul to the study of the black-lettered text before him. ”

“ I am a man of peace, as you may observe, carrying no other weapon than that which may rob men of their feet to—wit, may set them to the dance, the ballad, the pasquil and those light enjoyments of the flesh which our master Horace has even deigned to commend on occasion. And now for my sins, for which I pray the intercession of my holy patron, whose honourable name I happen to have forgotten, I—who know the forest better than the Mass book—am lost in this tangle at a moment when the natural humour of man leads him to meat and even to a cup of wine. ”