s that to-night I am in a mood for granting almost any favor. A
little later and I will attend to you." The fleet disorder of his
visage had lapsed again into the meditative smile which was that of
Lucifer watching a toasted soul. "And so it ends," he said.
"Conqueror of Scotland, Scourge of France! O unconquerable king! and
will the worms of Ermenoueil, then, pause to-morrow to consider through
what a glorious turmoil their dinner came to them?"

"You design murder, fair cousin?" Sire Edward said.

The French King shrugged. "I design that within this moment my lords
shall slay you while I sit here and do not move a finger. Is it not
good to be a king, my cousin, and to sit quite still, and to see your
bitterest enemy hacked and slain--and all the while to sit quite still,
quite unruffled, as a king should always be? Eh, eh! I never lived
until to-night!"

"Now, by Heaven," said Sire Edward, "I am your kinsman and your guest,
I am unarmed--"

And Philippe bowed his head. "Undoubtedly," he assented, "the deed is
a foul one. But I desire Gascony very earnestly, and so long as you
live you will never permit me to retain Gascony. Hence it is quite
necessary, you conceive, that I murder you. What!" he presently said,
"will you not beg for mercy? I had so hoped," the French King added,
somewhat wistfully, "that you might be afraid to die, O huge and
righteous man! and would entreat me to spare you. To spurn the weeping
conqueror of Llewellyn, say ... But these sins which damn one's soul
are in actual performance very tedious affairs; and I begin to grow
aweary of the game. He bien! now kill this man for me, messieurs."

The English King strode forward. "O shallow trickster!" Sire Edward
thundered. "_Am I not afraid?_ You baby, would you ensnare a lion
with a flimsy rat-trap? Not so; for it is the nature of a rat-trap,
fair cousin, to ensnare not the beast which imperiously desires and
takes in daylight, but the tinier and the filthier beast that covets
and under darkness pilfers--as you and your seven skulkers!" The man
was rather terrible; not a Frenchman within the hut but had drawn back
a little.

"Listen!" Sire Edward said, and came yet farther toward the King of
France and shook at him one forefinger; "when you were in your cradle I
was leading armies. When you were yet unbreeched I was lord of half
Europe. For thirty years I have driven kings before me as Fierabras
did. Am I, then, a perso