第3章 HOW THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN,AND HOW NORMAN LESLIE FL

Yet it would have been well for me to follow even this craft more,and my sports and pastimes less:Dickon Melville had then escaped a broken head,and I,perchance,a broken heart.But youth is given over to vanities that war against the soul,and,among others,to that wicked game of the Golf,now justly cried down by our laws,{2}as the mother of cursing and idleness,mischief and wastery,of which game,as I verily believe,the devil himself is the father.

It chanced,on an October day of the year of grace Fourteen hundred and twenty-eight,that I was playing myself at this accursed sport with one Richard Melville,a student of like age with myself.We were evenly matched,though Dickon was tall and weighty,being great of growth for his age,whereas I was of but scant inches,slim,and,as men said,of a girlish countenance.Yet I was well skilled in the game of the Golf,and have driven a Holland ball the length of an arrow-flight,there or thereby.But wherefore should my sinful soul be now in mind of these old vanities,repented of,I trust,long ago?

As we twain,Dickon and I,were known for fell champions at this unholy sport,many of the other scholars followed us,laying wagers on our heads.They were but a wild set of lads,for,as then,there was not,as now there is,a house appointed for scholars to dwell in together under authority.We wore coloured clothes,and our hair long;gold chains,and whingers {3}in our belts,all of which things are now most righteously forbidden.But I carried no whinger on the links,as considering that it hampered a man in his play.So the game went on,now Dickon leading "by a hole,"as they say,and now myself,and great wagers were laid on us.

Now,at the hole that is set high above the Eden,whence you see far over the country,and the river-mouth,and the shipping,it chanced that my ball lay between Dickon's and the hole,so that he could in no manner win past it.

"You laid me that stimy of set purpose,"cried Dickon,throwing down his club in a rage;"and this is the third time you have done it in this game.""It is clean against common luck,"quoth one of his party,"and the game and the money laid on it should be ours.""By the blessed bones of the Apostle,"I said,'no luck is more common.To-day to me,to-morrow to thee!Lay it of purpose,Icould not if I would.""You lie!"he shouted in a rage,and gripped to his whinger.

It was ever my father's counsel that I must take the lie from none.

Therefore,as his steel was out,and I carried none,I made no more ado,and the word of shame had scarce left his lips when I felled him with the iron club that we use in sand.

"He is dead!"cried they of his party,while the lads of my own looked askance on me,and had manifestly no mind to be partakers in my deed.

Now,Melville came of a great house,and,partly in fear of their feud,partly like one amazed and without any counsel,I ran and leaped into a boat that chanced to lie convenient on the sand,and pulled out into the Eden.Thence I saw them raise up Melville,and bear him towards the town,his friends lifting their hands against me,with threats and malisons.His legs trailed and his head wagged like the legs and the head of a dead man,and I was without hope in the world.

At first it was my thought to row up the river-mouth,land,and make across the marshes and fields to our house at Pitcullo.But Ibethought me that my father was an austere man,whom I had vexed beyond bearing with my late wicked follies,into which,since the death of my mother,I had fallen.And now I was bringing him no college prize,but a blood-feud,which he was like to find an ill heritage enough,even without an evil and thankless son.My stepmother,too,who loved me little,would inflame his anger against me.Many daughters he had,and of gear and goods no more than enough.Robin,my elder brother,he had let pass to France,where he served among the men of John Kirkmichael,Bishop of Orleans--he that smote the Duke of Clarence in fair fight at Bauge.

Thinking of my father,and of my stepmother's ill welcome,and of Robin,abroad in the wars against our old enemy of England,it may be that I fell into a kind of half dream,the boat lulling me by its movement on the waters.Suddenly I felt a crashing blow on my head.

It was as if the powder used for artillery had exploded in my mouth,with flash of light and fiery taste,and I knew nothing.Then,how long after I could not tell,there was water on my face,the blue sky and the blue tide were spinning round--they spun swiftly,then slowly,then stood still.There was a fierce pain stounding in my head,and a voice said -"That good oar-stroke will learn you to steal boats!"I knew the voice;it was that of a merchant sailor-man with whom,on the day before,I had quarrelled in the market-place.Now I was lying at the bottom of a boat which four seamen,who had rowed up to me and had broken my head as I meditated,were pulling towards a merchant-vessel,or carrick,in the Eden-mouth.Her sails were being set;the boat wherein I lay was towing that into which I had leaped after striking down Melville.For two of the ship's men,being on shore,had hailed their fellows in the carrick,and they had taken vengeance upon me.

"You scholar lads must be taught better than your masters learn you,"said my enemy.

And therewith they carried me on board the vessel,the "St.