? I never tire; I never weary;--give me to dance and to sing,
but ever to talk: then am I at ease. Heaven is just. Enter,
sir--enter!"

He led me by a shady alley into his orchard, and thence to a stable,
where we left Rosinante at hob-a-nob with his mare over a friendly
bottle of hay. And we ourselves passed into the house, and ascended a
staircase into an upper chamber. This chamber was raftered, its walls
hung with an obscure tapestry, its floor strewn with sand, and its
lozenged casement partly shuttered against the blaze of sunshine that
flowed across the forests far away to the west.

My friend eyed me brightly and busily as a starling. "You danced fine,
sir," he said. "Oh! it is a _pleasure_ to me. Ay, and now I come to
consider it, methought I did hear hoofs behind me that might yet be
echo. No, but I did _not_ think: 'twas but my ear cried to his
dreaming master. Ever dreaming; God help at last the awakening! But
well met, well met, I say again. I am cheered. And you but just in
time! Nay, I would not have missed him for a ransom. So--so--this leg,
that leg; up now--hands over down we go! Lackaday, I am old bones for
such freaks. Once!... '_Memento mori_!' say I, and smell the shower
the sweeter for it. Be seated, sir, bench or stool, wheresoever you'd
be. You're looking peaked. That burden rings in my skull like a
bagpipe. Toot-a-tootie, toot-a-toot! Och, sad days!"

We devoured our meal of cold meats and pickled fish, fruit and junket
and a kind of harsh cheese, as if in contest for a wager. And copious
was the thin spicy wine with which we swam it home. Ever and again my
host would desist, to whistle, or croon (with a packed mouth) in the
dismallest of tenors, a stave or two of the tune we had danced to,
bobbing head and foot in sternest time. Then a great vacancy would
overspread his face turned to the window, as suddenly to gather to a
cheerful smile, and light, irradiated, once more on me. Then down
would drop his chin over his plate, and away go finger and spoon among
his victuals in a dance as brisk and whole-hearted as the other.

He took me out again into his garden after supper, and we walked
beneath the trees.

"'Tis bliss to be a bachelor, sir," he said, gazing on the resinous
trunk of an old damson tree. "I gorge, I guzzle; I am merry, am
melancholy; studious, harmonical, drowsy,--and none to scold
or deny me. For the rest, why, youth is vain: yet youth had
pleasure--innocence and delight. I