, who took it from her fingers with an ill grace.
His spiteful eyes grinned at the white fluid malignly, as if whatever it
emblemed of purity, of simplicity, exasperated him. He leered up again
at the girl with the same visible rage at her purity, her simplicity,
and he made a little tilting motion with his fingers, as if the devil in
him were minded to dash the milk in the maid's face. But her
indifference defied him and the thirst tugged at his throat.

"Water is the drink of the wise," the girl said, steadily. "But milk is
the wine of the gods."

She was saying words that her father often said, and for his sake they
seemed very fair and very true, and she uttered them lovingly. To the
fool they seemed the last frenzy of folly. But there was nothing better
to drink, and his dryness yearned furiously. He lifted the cup to his
lips and sipped with a wry face. Then he glanced up at the girl slyly.

"It were but courteous to drink my hostess's health, but I will not
pledge your ripeness in so thin-spirited a tipple. Yet a malediction may
cream on it, so here's damnation to the King."

And as he spoke he drank again, and seemed to drink with more gusto, but
the girl frowned at his malevolence.

"The milk should be sour that is supped so sourly," she said.

The grimace on the twisted face deepened into a sneer as the fool handed
back the empty cup, to be filled again.

"Mistress Red-head," he said, "if you knew the King as well as I know
him you would damn him as deeply."

Perpetua's wide eyes watched the deformed thing with wonder. She thought
he must, indeed, be mad to rail at the good King, so she answered him
gently as she gave him back the full cup.

"I have lived on this hill-top all my life, and know little of the world
of cities at the foot of the mountain. But whenever my father speaks of
the King he calls him Robert the Good."

[Illustration: PERPETUA AND DIOGENES THE FOOL]

The fool shrugged his shoulders--an action that accentuated their
deformity; and he chuckled awhile to himself, like a choking hen, while
he peered maliciously at the maiden through narrowed slits of eyelids.
When he had savored sufficiently whatever jest so moved him to ugly
mirth he spoke again.

"Oh, ay--Robert the Good! But virtue is no medicine for mortality, so
Robert the Good is dead and buried these six weeks, and Robert the Bad
reigns in his stead, and again I drink to his happy damnation."

And again he drank the cool