ll have as much as you," said the second.

"Did I not do my duty as well as you?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Is not once as good as ten times? And now that you know my will,
instead of standing here squabbling over a trifle, I recommend you to
give me my half, or you will soon see a fight. Do you think you can do
as you like with me?"

"Oh, indeed!" said the other, "will you try force? By God's power you
shall only have what is right,--that is to say one third part--and I
will have the rest. Did I not have twice as much trouble as you?"

With that the other doubled up her fist and landed it in the face of
her companion, the one for whom the meeting had been first arranged,
who quickly returned the blow. In short they fought as though they would
have killed each other, and called one another foul names. When the
people in the street saw the fight between the two companions, who a
short while previously had been so friendly, they were much astonished,
and came and separated the combatants. Then the husbands were called,
and each asked his wife the cause of the quarrel. Each tried to make
the other in the wrong, without telling the real cause, and set their
husbands against each other so that they fought, and the sergeants came
and sent them to cool their heels in prison.

Justice intervened, and the two women were compelled to own that the
fight was about a piece of stuff for a kerchief. The Council, seeing
that the case did not concern them, sent it to the "King of the
Bordels", because the women were his subjects. And during the affair the
poor husbands remained in gaol awaiting sentence, which, owing to the
infinite number of cases, is likely to remain unsettled for a long time.

*****

STORY THE NINETY-THIRD -- HOW A GOOD WIFE WENT ON A PILGRIMAGE. [93]

By Messire Timoleon Vignier.

_Of a good wife who pretended to her husband that she was going on
a pilgrimage, in order to find opportunity to be with her lover the
parish-clerk--with whom her husband found her; and of what he said and
did when he saw them doing you know what._

Whilst I have a good audience, let me relate a funny incident which
happened in the district of Hainault.

In a village there, lived a married woman, who loved the parish clerk
much more than she did her own husband, and in order to find means to be
with the clerk, she feigned to her husband that she owed a pilgrimage to
a certain saint, whose shrine was not far fro