the Eighth. "Kindly allow me to
conduct my own case. All you've got to say, Rufus, is whether it's true
what he says, that Walter Tyrrell shot you?"

"Him!" cried Rufus. "He couldn't hit a haystack a yard off, if he
tried."

"Then he didn't do it? That's all right. Why couldn't you have said so
at once? All down, Nigger? That makes two lies. Now call up the
next."

"Henry the First, surnamed Beauclerk, never smiled again after his son
was lost, and died of a surfeit of lampreys," read the prince.

"Oh, those lampreys!" groaned Henry; "I am perfectly sick of them. I
assure you, my lords and gentlemen, they were no more lampreys--"

"No, not after you'd done supper," growled Rufus.

"In that case, William," retorted Beauclerk, "I should have said
`there,' and not `they.' But I do assure you, gentlemen, I never saw a
lamprey in my life; and as for smiling again," added he, in quite an
apologetic way, "I did it often, when nobody was by; _really I did_."

"Are you sure?" asked the judge. "Show us how you did it."

Whereupon Henry the First favoured the court with a fascinating leer,
which left no doubt on any one's mind that he had been falsely accused.

So two more lies were set down against me; and the Black Prince called
over the next.

"`Stephen usurped the throne on Henry's death.'"

"Quite right, quite right," said Matilda; "perfectly correct."

"`Matilda, after a civil war, in which her bad temper made her many
enemies--'"

"Oh you story!" exclaimed the empress. "Oh! you wicked young man!"

"Address the judge, please," said Henry the Eighth.

"Oh, you wicked young man," repeated the empress, turning to the bench;
"I'd like to scratch you, I would!"

"Don't do that," said Henry: "I get quite enough of that at home, I
assure you. Anyhow, Nigger can chalk it down a lie for you, eh?"

"And one for me, too, please," said Stephen. "How can a fellow usurp
what belongs to him?"

"Give it up," said Coeur de Lion. "Ask another."

"Silence in the court," cried the judge. "Put it down, Nigger, and for
mercy sake drive on, or we shall be here all night."

"`Henry the Second murdered Thomas a Becket, and was served right by
having a family of bad sons,'" read the usher.

"That's nice!" said Henry, advancing. "Bad sons, indeed! Never had a
better lot in all my life. Really, my lord, that ought to count for
four lies right off. The idea of calling my Johnny a bad boy. Why, my
lord, he