The White Company Chapter 3 - How Hordle John Cozened the Fuller of Lymington

**Arthur Conan Doyle** (0:23)
CHAPTER 3 HOW HORDLE JOHN CUSSINED THE FULLER OF LIMMINGTON.
It is not, however, in the nature of things, that a lad of twenty, with young life glowing in his veins, and all the wide world before him, should spend his first hours of freedom in mourning for what he had left. Long ere Allen was out of sound of the beaulieu bells, he was striding sturdily along, swinging his staff and whistling as merry as the birds in the thicket. It was an evening to raise a man's heart, the sun shining slantwise through the trees, through delicate trace-throughs across the road, with bars of golden light between. Away in the distance, before and behind, the green boughs now turning in places to a coppery redness shot their broad arches across the track. The still summer air was heavy with the resinous smell of the great forest. Here and there a tawny brook prattled out from among the underwood and lost itself again in the ferns and brambles upon the further side. Save the dull piping of insects and the sow of the leaves, there was silence everywhere—the sweet restful silence of nature.
And yet there was no want of life. The whole wide wood was full of it. Now it was a lithe furtive stoat which shot across the path on some fell errand of its own. Then it was a wildcat which squatted upon the outlying branch of an oak, and peeped at the traveller with a yellow and dubious eye.
Once it was a wild sow which scuttled out of the bracken with two young sounders at her heels, and once a lordly red stag walked daintily out from among the tree trunks, and looked around him with the fearless gaze of one who lived under the king's own high protection.
Allan gave his staff a merry flourish, however, and the red deer bethought him that the king was far off, so streaked away from whence he came.
The youth had now journeyed considerably beyond the furthest domains of the abbey. He was the more surprised, therefore, when, on coming round a turn in the path, he perceived a man clad in the familiar garb of the order, and seated in a clump of heather by the roadside. Allan had known every brother well, but this was a face which was new to him, a face which was very red and puffed, working this way and that as though the man was sore perplexed in his mind. Once he shook both hands furiously in the air, and twice he sprang from his seat and hurried down the road. When he rose, however, Allan observed that his robe was much too long and loose for him in every direction, trailing upon the ground and bagging about his ankles, so that even with trust upskirts he could make little progress. He ran once, but the long gown clogging him, so that he slowed down into a shambling walk, and finally plumped into the heather once more. Young friend, said he, when Allan was abreast of him, I fear from thy garb thou canst know little of the Abbey of Beaulieu. You are in error, my friend, the clerk answered, for I have spent all my days within its walls. Hast so indeed, cried he, then perhaps canst tell me the name of a great loathly lump of a brother, with freckled face and a hand like a spade. His eyes were black, and his hair was red, and his voice like a parish bull. I trow there cannot be two alike in the same cloisters. That can surely be no other than Brother John, said Allan. I trust he has done you no wrong that you should be so hot against him. Wrong, Quotar? cried the other, jumping out of the heather. Wrong? Why, he hath stolen every plaque of clothing off my back, hath that be a wrong, and hath left me here in this sorry frock of white folding, so that I have shame to go back to my wife, lest she think that I have donned her old kirtle. Harrow and alas! that I should ever have met him! But how came's this? asked the young clerk, who could scarce keep from laughter at the sight of the hot little man so swayed in the great white cloak. It came this way, he said, sitting down once more. I was passing this way, hoping to reach Limmington air-nightfall, when I came on this red-headed knave, seated even where we are sitting now. I uncovered and louted as I passed, thinking that he might be a holy man at his horizons. But he called to me and asked me if I had heard speak of the new indulgence in favour of the Cistercians. Not I, I answered. Then the worse for thy soul, said he. And with that he broke into a long tale, how that on account of the virtues of the Abbot Berkish, it had been decreed by the Pope that whoever should wear the habit of a monk of Beaulieu, for as long as he might say the seven Psalms of David, should be assured of the Kingdom of Heaven. When I heard this, I prayed him on my knees that he would give me the use of his gown, which after many contentions he at last agreed to do, on my paying him three marks towards the re-guilding of the image of Lawrence the Martyr. Having stripped his robe, I had no choice but to let him have the wearing of my good leathern jerkin and hose, for, as he said, it was chilling to the blood, and unseemly to the eye to stand frockless, while I made my horizons. He had scarce got them on, and it was a sore labor seeing that my inches will scarce match my girth, he had scarce got them on, I say, and I not yet at the end of the second psalm, when he bade me do honour to my new dress, and with that set off down the road as fast as his feet could carry him. For myself I could no more run than if I had been sewn in a sack. So here I sit, and here I am likely to sit, before I set eyes upon my clothes again. Nay, friend, take it not so sadly, said Allen, clapping the disconsolate one on the shoulder, Can't change thy robe for a jerk in once more at the Abbey, unless perchance you have a friend near at hand.