and be good is a good thing," then saith he: "but
freedom to be ill, and do ill, must needs be an ill thing. And man
being what he is, how makest thou sure that he shall always use his
freedom for good, and not for ill?"

"Why, that must man chance," said I.

"A sorry chance," answereth he. "I were liever not to chance it. I
thought I heard thee deny Fina this last week to go to the dance at
Underby Fair?"

"So thou didst," said I. "She is too young, and too giddy belike, to
trust with a bevy of idle damosels as giddy as she."

"Well, we are none of us so far grown-up in all wisdom that it were safe
to trust us with our own reins in all things. Hast never heard the saw,
`He that ruleth his own way hath a fool to his governor'?"

"Well!" said I; "but then let the wise men be picked out to rule us, and
the fools to obey."

"Excellent doctrine, my Sissot!" quoth Jack, smiling in his eyes: "at
least, for the fools. I might somewhat pity the wise men. But how to
bring it about? Be the fools to pick out the wise men? and are they
wise enough to do it? I sorely fear we shall have a sorry lot of
governors when thy law comes to be tried. I think, Wife, thou and I had
better leave God to rule the world, for I suspect we should do it
something worser than He."

Let me fall back to my chronicling. Another matter happed in the year
1319, the which I trow I shall not lightly forget. The Queen abode at
Brotherton, the King being absent. The year afore, had the Scots made
great raids on the northern parts of England, had burned the outlying
parts of York while the King was there, and taken the Earl of Richmond
prisoner: and now, hearing of the Queen at Brotherton, but slenderly
guarded, down they marched into Yorkshire, and we, suspecting nought,
were well-nigh caught in the trap.

Well I mind that night, when I was awoke by pebbles cast up at my
casement, for I lay in a turret chamber, that looked outward. So soon
as I knew what the sound meant, I rose from my bed and cast a mantle
about me, and opened the casement.

"Is any there?" said I.

"Is that thou, Sissot?" quoth a voice which I knew at once for my
brother Robert's, "Lose not one moment, but arouse the Queen, and pray
her to take horse as speedily as may be, or she shall be captured of the
Scots, which come in great force by the Aire Valley, and are nearhand
[nearly] at mine heels. And send one to bid the garrison be alert, and
to let me in, that I