f a lord and I
am the son of a peasant."

"Ha! what! The son of a peasant, say you, and you take your choice of
the pretty girls of the village?"

"Seigneur, pardon me. I did not choose this maiden; God gave her to
me."

During this parley Annaik stood by, trembling violently. She had heard
of the Marquis of Guerande, and was only too well aware of the evil
and reckless character he bore. The Clerk tried to calm her fears by
whispered words and pressures of the hand, but the wicked Marquis,
observing the state of terror she was in, exulted in the alarm he was
causing her.

"Well, fellow," said he, "since you cannot wrestle with me perhaps you
will try a bout of sword-play."

At these words Annaik's rosy cheeks became deathly white; but the
Clerk of Garlon spoke up like a man.

"My lord," he said, "I do not wear a sword. The club is my only
weapon. Should you use your sword against me it would but stain it."

The wicked Marquis uttered a fiendish laugh. "If I stain my sword, by
the Saints, I shall wash it in your blood," he cried, and as he spoke
he passed his rapier through the defenceless Clerk's body.

At the sight of her slain lover the gentle heart of Annaik broke, and
a great madness came upon her. Like a tigress she leapt upon the
Marquis and tore his sword from his hand. Without his rapier he was as
a child in the grasp of the powerful Breton peasant woman. Exerting
all her strength, in a frenzy of grief she dragged the wretch to the
green where the dance was in progress, haling him round and round it
until exhausted. At last she dropped his senseless body on the green
turf and hastened homeward.

And once again we encounter the haunting refrain: "My good mother, if
you love me make my bed, for I am sick unto death."

"Why, daughter, you have danced too much; it is that which has made
you sick."

"I have not danced at all, mother; but the wicked Marquis has slain my
poor Clerk. Say to the sexton who buries him: 'Do not throw in much
earth, for in a little while you will have to place my daughter beside
him in this grave.' Since we may not share the same marriage-bed we
shall at least sleep in the same tomb, and if we have not been married
in this world we shall at least be joined in heaven."

The reader will be relieved to learn that the hero of this ballad,
the Clerk of Garlon, was not killed after all, and that for once fact
is enabled to step in to correct the sadness of fiction; for, when one