'Therefore,' said the prior, 'I pray you
take back your son, and let him find some other road to the stake than
that which runs through the gates of Bungay Priory.'
Now at this story my grandfather was so enraged that he almost fell into
a fit; then recovering, he bethought him of his cudgel of holly, and
would have used it. But my father, who was now nineteen years of age and
very stout and strong, twisted it from his hand and flung it full fifty
yards, saying that no man should touch him more were he a hundred times
his father. Then he walked away, leaving the prior and my grandfather
staring at each other.
Now to shorten a long tale, the end of the matter was this. It was
believed both by my grandfather and the prior that the true cause of my
father's contumacy was a passion which he had conceived for a girl of
humble birth, a miller's fair daughter who dwelt at Waingford Mills.
Perhaps there was truth in this belief, or perhaps there was none. What
does it matter, seeing that the maid married a butcher at Beccles and
died years since at the good age of ninety and five? But true or false,
my grandfather believed the tale, and knowing well that absence is the
surest cure for love, he entered into a plan with the prior that my
father should be sent to a monastery at Seville in Spain, of which
the prior's brother was abbot, and there learn to forget the miller's
daughter and all other worldly things.
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