Goose quills

"  'And what pledge am I to have for all this?'  said the Prior.
'When Isaac returns successful through your mediation,' said the outlaw, ' I swear by St. Hubert I will see that he pays thee the money in good silver, or I will reckon with him for it in such sort he had better have paid twenty such sums.'

'Well then, Jew,'  said Aymer, ' since I must needs meddle in this matter, let me have the use of thy writing-tablets -- though hold, rather than use thy pen, I would fast for twenty-four hours, and where shall I find one?'

'If your holy scruples can dispense with using the Jew's tablets, for the pen I can find a remedy,' said the yeoman; and bending his bow, he aimed his shaft at a wild goose which was soaring over their heads, the advanced-guard of a phalanx of his tribe which were winging their way to the distant and solitary fens of Holderness.  The bird came  fluttering down, transfixed with the arrow.

'There, Prior, ' said the Captain, 'are quills enough to supply all the monks of Jervaulx for the next hundred years, an they take not to writing chronicles.' "

Ivanhoe  Sir Walter Scott