sometimes arose between him and the passengers. It is needless to say, that the bridge-ward had usually the better in these questions, since he could at pleasure detain the traveller on the opposite side; or, suffering him to pass half-way, might keep him prisoner in his tower till they were agreed on the rate of pontage.n
But it was most frequently with the monks of Saint Mary's that the warder had to dispute his perquisites. These holy men insisted for, and at length obtained, a right of gratuitous passage to themselves, greatly to the discontent of the bridge-keeper. But when they demanded the same immunity for the numerous pilgrims who visited the shrine, the bridge-keeper waxed restive, and was supported by his lord in his resistance. The controversy grew animated on both sides; the abbot menaced excommunication, and the keeper of the bridge, though unable to retaliate in kind, yet made each individual monk who had to cross and recross the river, endure a sort of purgatory, ere he would accommodate them with a passage. This was a great inconvenience, and would have proved a more serious one, but that the river was fordable for man and horse in ordinary weather.
It was a fine moonlight night, as we have already said, when Father Philip approached this bridge, the singular construction of which gives a curious idea of the insecurity of the times. The river was not in Hood, but it was above its ordinary level—a heavy water, as it is called in that country, through which the monk had no particular inclination to ride, if he could manage the matter better.
'Peter, my good friend,' cried the sacristan, raising his voice; 'my very excellent friend, Peter, be so kind as to lower the drawbridge. Peter, I say, dost thou not hear?—it is thy gossip, Father Philip, who calls thee.'
Peter heard him perfectly well, and saw him into the bargain; but as he had considered the sacristan as peculiar ly his enemy in his dispute with the convent, he went quietly to bed, after reconnoitring the monk through his loop-hole, observing to his wife, that 'riding the water in a moonlight night would do the sacristan no harm, and would teach him the value of a brig the neist time, on whilk a man might pass high and dry, winter and summer, flood and ebb.'
After exhausting his voice in entreaties and threats, which
