ll you presently), this impiety, I say, finished the
good standing of the House of Wantley. Rome frowned, the earth
trembled, and the Dragon came. And (the legend went on to say) this
curse would not be removed until a female lineal descendant of the
first Sir Godfrey, a young lady who had never been married, and had
never loved anybody except her father and mother and her sisters and
brothers, should go out in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve,
all by herself, and encounter the Dragon single handed.

Now, of course, this is not what little Whelpdale is trying to tell
the Baron up in the study; for everybody in Wantley knew all about the
legend except one person, and that was Miss Elaine, Sir Godfrey's only
daughter, eighteen years old at the last Court of Piepoudre, when her
father (after paying all the farmers for all the cows and sheep they
told him had been eaten by the Dragon since the last Court) had made
his customary proclamation, to wit: his good-will and protection to
all his tenantry; and if any man, woman, child, or other person,
caused his daughter, Miss Elaine, to hear anything about the legend,
such tale-bearer should be chained to a tree, and kept fat until the
Dragon found him and ate him. So everybody obligingly kept the Baron's
secret.

Sir Godfrey is just this day returned from France with some famous
tuns of wine, and presents for Elaine and Mrs. Mistletoe. His humour
is (or was, till Whelpdale, poor wretch! answered the bell) of the
best possible. And now, this moment, he is being told by the luckless
Buttons that the Dragon of Wantley has taken to drinking, as well as
eating, what does not belong to him; has for the last three nights
burst the big gates of the wine-cellar that open on the hillside the
Manor stands upon; that a hogshead of the Baron's best Burgundy is
going; and that two hogsheads of his choicest Malvoisie are gone!

One hundred and twenty-eight gallons in three nights' work! But I
suppose a fire-breathing Dragon must be very thirsty.

There was a dead silence in the study overhead, and old Popham's
calves were shaking loose as he waited.

"And so you stood by and let this black, sneaking, prowling, thieving"
(here the Baron used some shocking expressions which I shall not set
down) "Dragon swill my wine?"

"St--st--stood by, your ludship?" said little Whelpdale. "No, sir; no
one didn't do any standing by, sir. He roared that terrible, sir, we
was all under the bed."