n so few as four pieces, and without
turning over any piece when placing them together. The method of doing
this is subtle, but I think the reader will find the problem a most
interesting one.

27.--_The Dyer's Puzzle._

One of the pilgrims was a Dyer, but Chaucer tells us nothing about him,
the Tales being incomplete. Time after time the company had pressed this
individual to produce a puzzle of some kind, but without effect. The poor
fellow tried his best to follow the examples of his friends the Tapiser,
the Weaver, and the Haberdasher; but the necessary idea would not come,
rack his brains as he would. All things, however, come to those who
wait--and persevere--and one morning he announced, in a state of
considerable excitement, that he had a poser to set before them. He
brought out a square piece of silk on which were embroidered a number of
fleurs-de-lys in rows, as shown in our illustration.

"Lordings," said the Dyer, "hearken anon unto my riddle. Since I was
awakened at dawn by the crowing of cocks--for which din may our host
never thrive--I have sought an answer thereto, but by St. Bernard I have
found it not. There be sixty-and-four flowers-de-luce, and the riddle is
to show how I may remove six of these so that there may yet be an even
number of the flowers in every row and every column."

[Illustration]

The Dyer was abashed when every one of the company showed without any
difficulty whatever, and each in a different way, how this might be done.
But the good Clerk of Oxenford was seen to whisper something to the Dyer,
who added, "Hold, my masters! What I have said is not all. Ye must find
in how many different ways it may be done!" All agreed that this was
quite another matter. And only a few of the company got the right answer.

28.--_The Great Dispute between the Friar and the Sompnour._

Chaucer records the painful fact that the harmony of the pilgrimage was
broken on occasions by the quarrels between the Friar and the Sompnour.
At one stage the latter threatened that ere they reached Sittingbourne he
would make the Friar's "heart for to mourn;" but the worthy Host
intervened and patched up a temporary peace. Unfortunately trouble broke
out again over a very curious dispute in this way.

[Illustration]

At one point of the journey the road lay along two sides of a square
field, and some of the pilgrims persisted, in spite of trespass, in
cutting across from corner to corner, as they