move from before the abbey in a clump of spears; and behind it,
girt by steel-clad knights, the bold, black-hearted, and ambitious
hunchback moved on towards his brief kingdom and his lasting
infamy. But the wedding party turned upon the other side, and sat
down, with sober merriment, to breakfast. The father cellarer
attended on their wants, and sat with them at table. Hamley, all
jealousy forgotten, began to ply the nowise loth Alicia with
courtship. And there, amid the sounding of tuckets and the clash
of armoured soldiery and horses continually moving forth, Dick and
Joan sat side by side, tenderly held hands, and looked, with ever
growing affection, in each other's eyes.
Thenceforth the dust and blood of that unruly epoch passed them by.
They dwelt apart from alarms in the green forest where their love
began.
Two old men in the meanwhile enjoyed pensions in great prosperity
and peace, and with perhaps a superfluity of ale and wine, in
Tunstall hamlet. One had been all his life a shipman, and
continued to the last to lament his man Tom. The other, who had
been a bit of everything, turned in the end towards piety, and made
a most religious death under the name of Brother Honestus in the
neighbouring abbey. So Lawless had his will, and died a friar.
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