in a pikehead. But for me 'tis the greatest of ornaments.
Give you, it weakens the pikehead; but 'tis a gradely ornament.'

'Ornaments be folly,' the young Poins reiterated.

'Sir,' the Lincolnshire man answered again, 'there is the goodliest
folly that ever was. For if I weaken my eyes and tire my wrists with
small tappers and little files, and if I weaken the steel with small
holes, each hole represents a woman I have known undone and cast down
in her pride by a man. Here be sixty-and-four holes round and firm in
a pattern. Sixty-and-four women I have known undone.'

He paused and surveyed, winking and moving the scroll that the little
holes made in the tough steel of his axehead. Where a perforation was
not quite round, he touched it with his file.

'Hum! ha!' he gloated. 'In the centre of the head is the master hole
of all, planned out for being cut. But not yet cut! Mark you, 'tis not
yet cut. That is for the woman I hate most of all women. She is not
yet cast down that I have heard tell on, though some have said "Aye,"
some "Nay." Tell me, have you heard yet of a Kat Howard in the stews?'

'There is a Kat Howard is like to be----' the young Poins began. But
his slow cunning was aroused before he had the sentence out. Who could
tell what trick was this?

'Like to be what?' the Lincolnshire man badgered him. 'Like to be
what? To be what?'

'Nay, I know not,' Poins answered.

'Like to be what?' Hogben persisted.

'I know no Kat Howard,' Poins muttered sulkily. For he knew well that
the Lady Katharine's name was up in the taverns along of Thomas
Culpepper. And this Lincolnshire cow-dog was a knave too of Thomas's;
therefore the one Kat Howard who was like to be the King's wench and
the other Kat Howard known to Hogben might well be one and the same.

'Nay; if you will not, neither even will I,' Hogben said. 'You shall
have no more of my tale.'

Poins kept his blue eyes along the road. Far away, with an odd leap,
waving its arms abroad and coming by fits and starts, as a hare
gambols along a path--a figure was tiny to see, coming from Ardres way
towards Calais. It passed a load of hay on an ox-cart, and Poins could
see the peasants beside it scatter, leap the dyke and fly to stand
panting in the fields. The figure was clenching its fists; then it
fell to kicking the oxen; when they had overset the cart into the
dyke, it came dancing along with the same hare's gait.

'That is too like the repute of Thomas