gone, coward! Go fare as fares
the poor beggar thou sought'st to bite!" and the hound slunk out. Then
turned my mistress to me, and--"Butter," saith she, "yon beast sought to
bite an old beggar as we came through the park, so I whipped him. But
for naught save cruelty or disobedience will I ever whip a dog; so,
Butter, the next time that thou seest me about to lash one, keep thy
counsel." (This was the harshest that my lady e'er spoke, either to me
or to Marian.) Then went she to the door and called Marian.

"Come, nurse," quoth she, "I am a-weary. Fling me some skins on the
settle, and I will lie down, and thou shalt card out my locks with thy
fingers." So we heaped the settle with the skins o' white bears, and
thereon my lady cast herself, like a flower blown down upon a snow-bank;
and by-and-by, what with the warmth and Marian's strokings, she fell
into a deep sleep. But we two sate and gazed on her.

She was all clad in a tight riding-dress of green velour cloth, and her
white face seemed to come from the close collar like a white lily from
its sheath. She was e'er flower-like, asleep or waking, as I have said,
and her pretty head was sleek and yellow, like a butterfly's wing. She
was so sound that it appeared to me and Marian as though one longer
breath might transform the mimicry into the actual thing--death. But
by-and-by awe fell from us, as it doth ever fall, even in the presence
of that which hath awed us, and my wife and I did return to our
discourse concerning my Lord Denbeigh.

Quoth I to Marian, "But, wife, may not malice invent these tales?"

"Nay, nay," said she, shaking her head; "as bloody a rogue as ever
lived--as bloody a rogue as ever lived. They do say as how he'll set a
whole tavern in a broil ere he be entered in for three minutes."

"But," quoth I, "may he not be provoked?"

"Nay, I tell thee," said she; "but he'll jump at a body's head, and
cleave 't open ere a body can say 'Jesus.'"

At this I said, firmly, "I doubt not but what the poor man is most
surely maligned." Whereupon Mistress Butter did wax exceeding wroth.

"Why wilt thou e'er be seeking to plead the cause o' villains?" cried
she. "First that bloody beast o' my lady's, now this bloody villain o'
th' devil's. I do wonder at thee, Anthony Butter." Whereat I did put in
that I sometimes wondered at myself.

"For why?" quoth she.

"Why, that I ever married to be worded by a wench," said I. And at this
I am most entirely sure t