picking at his herring, 'but I have been at neither of these places. I was bred amongst the Cistercian monks at Beaulieu Abbey.'
'Pooh, pooh!' they cried both together. 'What sort of an upbringing is that?'
'Non cuivis contingit adire Corinthum,' quoth Alleyne.
'Come, brother Stephen, he hath some tincture of letters,' said the melancholy man more hopefully. 'He may be the better judge, since he hath no call to side with either of us. Now, attention, friend, and let your ears work as well as your nether jaw. Judex damnatur—you know the old saw. Here am I upholding the good fame of the learned Duns Scotus against the foolish quibblings and poor silly reasonings of Willie Ockham.'
'While I,' quoth the other loudly, 'do maintain the good sense and extraordinary wisdom of that most learned William against the crack-brained fantasies of the muddy Scotchman, who hath hid such little wit as he has under so vast a pile of words, that it is like one drop of Gascony in a firkin of ditch-water. Solomon his wisdom would not suffice to say what the rogue means.'
'Certes, Stephen Hapgood, his wisdom doth not suffice,' cried the other. 'It is as though a mole cried out against the morning star, because he could not see it. But our dispute, friend, is concerning the nature of that subtle essence which we call thought. For I hold with the learned Scotus that thought is in very truth a thing, even as vapour or fumes, or many other substances which our gross bodily eyes are blind to. For, look you, that which produces a thing must be itself a thing, and if a man's thought may produce a written book, then must thought itself be a material thing, even as the book is. Have I expressed it? Do I make it plain?'
'Whereas I hold,' shouted the other, ' with my revered preceptor, doctor prælarus et excellentissimus, that all things are but thought; for when thought is gone I prythee where are the things then? Here are trees about us, and I see them because I think I see them; but if I have swooned, or
