Scene-7 A Room in the Castle.Hugo is 
with his friend Eric and is preparing 
to leave for Count Baldwin's Castle 
to take Agatha to the Convent on the Rhine.


HUGO

The morn is fair, the weary miles
Will shorten ‘neath the summer’s wiles,
Pomona in the orchard smiles,
And in the meadow, Flora!
And I have roused a chosen band
For escort through the troubled land:
And shaken Elspeth by the hand,
And said farewell to Thora.

Comrade and kinsman—for thou art
Comrade and kin to me—we part
Ere nightfall, if at once we start,
We gain the dead Count’s castle.
The roads are fair, the days are fine,
Ere long I hope to reach the Rhine.
Forsooth, no friend to me or mine
Is that same Abbot Basil;

I thought he wrong’d us by his greed.
My father sign’d a foolish deed
For lack of gold in time of need,
And thus our lands went by us;
Yet wrong on our side may have been:
As far as my will goes, I ween,
‘Tis past, the grudge that lay between
Us twain. Men call him pious—

And I have prosper’d much since then,
And gain’d for one lost acre ten;
And even the ancient house and glen
Rebought with purchase-money.
He, too, is wealthy; he has got
By churchly rights a fertile spot,
A land of corn and wine, I wot,
A land of milk and honey.
          Adam Lindsay Gordon