st replaced all other feeling on the features of the
duke's _plaisant_.

"Spare me your threats, Nanette," he replied, coldly. "Had you
intended to set them on me, you would have done it long ere this."

The woman hesitated. His calm, almost contemptuous, confidence was not
without its effect upon her. Had he trembled, she would have spoken,
but before his disdain, and the gay splendor of his attire, conspicuous
amid rags from rubbish heaps, she felt a sudden consciousness of her
own unclean environment; at the same time unusual warnings in her
conjurations recurred to her. Something about him--was it dignity or
pride or a nameless fear she herself experienced but could not
understand?--beat down her eyes and she turned them doggedly away.

Abruptly she moved to the fire and again began to stir the mess, while
the suppressed excitement in the room at once subsided. A minstrel
lightly touched his battered dulcimer; a poet hummed a song in the
dialect of thieves; a juggler began practising some deft work for hand
and eye, and he of the hare lip sank quietly into a corner and
patiently watched the simmering pot. The dwarf, with some misgiving,
as a dog that is beaten crawls cautiously out of its kennel, crept from
beneath the table.

"Oh, mistress," he whimpered, "some of it has boiled over!"

"Boiled over!" echoed the morio, mournfully.

At the same time the woman grasped the handle of the heavy kettle,
lifted it from the jack, displaying in her bared arms the muscles of a
man, and, staggering beneath the load, bore it steaming to the table.
Amid the subsequent confusion, the gipsy held aloof from the demolition
of the rabbit, and, seating herself at the foot of the table, began
moodily once more to turn the cards.

A merry droll acted as host and dipped freely for all with the long
spoon, commenting the while he dispensed the mess according to the
wants of the miscellaneous gathering: "Pot-luck! 'Tis luck, and
they're no field mice in it! There's everything else!" or "A bit of
rabbit, my masters! I'll warrant he'll hop down your throats as fast
as e'er he jumped a hillock." And, when one ate too greedily, slap
went a spoonful of gravy o'er him with: "I thought you would catch it,
knave!"

"Are they not blithe devils 'round the caldron?" muttered the woman.
"There it is again!"--Bending over the bits of pasteboard on the table.
"The duke here! And the fool on horseback! What do the cards mean?"

"T