nt vision. Going where he would, and saying what he listed,
now in the Queen's inner chamber, then in the midst of the Council,
unconsidered, and the butt of all, he paid for his bed and bounty by
shooting shafts of foolery which as often made his listeners shrink
as caused their laughter. The Queen he called Delicio, and Leicester,
Obligato--as one who piped to another's dance. He had taken to
Buonespoir at the first glance, and had frequented him, and Lempriere
had presently been added to his favour. He had again and again been
messenger between them, as also of late between Angele and Michel, whose
case he viewed from a stand-point of great cheerfulness, and treated
them as children playing on the sands--as, indeed, he did the Queen and
all near to her. But Buonespoir, the pirate, was to him reality and the
actual, and he called him Bono Publico. At first Lempriere, ever
jealous of his importance, was inclined to treat him with elephantine
condescension; but he could not long hold out against the boon archness
of the jester, and he collapsed suddenly into as close a friendship as
that between himself and Buonespoir.

A rollicking spirt was his own fullest stock-in-trade, and it won him
like a brother.

So it was that here, in the very bosom of the forest, lured by the pipe
the fool played, Lempriere burst forth into song, in one hand a bottle
of canary, in the other a handful of comfits:

"Duke William was a Norman
(Spread the sail to the breeze!)
That did to England ride;
At Hastings by the Channel
(Drink the wine to the lees!)
Our Harold the Saxon died.
If there be no cakes from Normandy,
There'll be more ale in England!"

"Well sung, nobility, and well said," cried Buonespoir, with a rose by
the stem in his mouth, one hand beating time to the music, the other
clutching a flagon of muscadella; "for the Normans are kings in England,
and there's drink in plenty at the Court of our Lady Duchess."

"Delicio shall never want while I have a penny of hers to spend," quoth
the fool, feeling for another tune. "Should conspirators prevail, and
the damnedest be, she hath yet the Manor of Rozel and my larder," urged
Lempriere, with a splutter through the canary.

"That shall be only when the Fifth wind comes--it is so ordained,
Nuncio!" said the fool blinking. Buonespoir set down his flagon. "And
what wind is the Fifth wind?" he asked, scr