sat at the exclusion of custom snoring like a pig.

Denys and Gerard stood and contemplated this curiosity; emblem, permit
me to remark, of the lets and hindrances to commerce that characterized
his epoch.

"Jump over him!"

"The door is too low."

"March through him!"

"The man is too thick."

"What is the coil?" inquired a mumbling voice from the interior;
apprentice with his mouth full.

"We want to get into your shop?"

"What for, in Heaven's name??!!!"

"Shoon, lazy bones!"

The ire of the apprentice began to rise at such an explanation. "And
could ye find no hour out of all the twelve to come pestering us for
shoon, but the one little, little hour my master takes his nap, and I
sit down to my dinner, when all the rest of the world is full long ago?"

Denys heard, but could not follow the sense. "Waste no more time talking
their German gibberish," said he; "take out thy knife and tickle his fat
ribs."

"That I will not," said Gerard.

"Then here goes; I'll prong him with this."

Gerard seized the mad fellow's arm in dismay, for he had been long
enough in the country to guess that the whole town would take part in
any brawl with the native against a stranger. But Denys twisted away
from him, and the cross-bow bolt in his hand was actually on the road to
the sleeper's ribs; but at that very moment two females crossed the road
towards him; he saw the blissful vision, and instantly forgot what he
was about, and awaited their approach with unreasonable joy.

Though companions, they were not equals, except in attractiveness to a
Burgundian crossbow man; for one was very tall, the other short, and
by one of those anomalies which society, however primitive, speedily
establishes, the long one held up the little one's tail. The tall one
wore a plain linen coif on her head, a little grogram cloak over her
shoulders, a grey kirtle, and a short farthingale or petticoat of bright
red cloth, and feet and legs quite bare, though her arms were veiled in
tight linen sleeves.

The other a kirtle broadly trimmed with fur, her arms in double sleeves,
whereof the inner of yellow satin clung to the skin; the outer, all
befurred, were open at the inside of the elbow, and so the arm passed
through and left them dangling. Velvet head-dress, huge purse at girdle,
gorgeous train, bare legs. And thus they came on, the citizen's wife
strutting, and the maid gliding after, holding her mistress's train
devoutly in both hands