im hold
his peace.

In such sport the hours passed, till we were safely come to Tours, and so
to their house in a street running off the great place, where the
cathedral stands. It was a goodly dwelling, with fair carved-work on the
beams, and in the doorway stood the old Scots kinswoman, smiling wide and
toothless, to welcome us. Elliot kissed her quickly, and she fondled
Elliot, and held a hand out over her shoulder to greet me.

"But where is my jackanapes, that should have been here to salute his
mistress?" Elliot cried.

"Out and alas!" said the old wife in our country tongue--"out and alas!
for I have ill news. The poor beast is missing these three days past,
and we fear he is stolen away by some gangrel bodies, for the town is
full of them. There came two to our door, three days agone, and one was
a blind man, and the other a one-armed soldier, maimed in the wars, and I
gave them bite and sup, as a Christian should do. Now, they had not been
gone but a few minutes, and I was in the spence, putting away the dishes,
when I heard a whistle in the street, and anon another. I thought little
of it, and so was about my business for an hour, when I missed the
jackanapes. And then there was a hue and cry, and all the house was
searched, and the neighbours were called on, but since that day there has
been no word of the jackanapes. But, for the blind man and the armless
soldier, the town guard saw them leaving by the North Gate, with a violer
woman and her husband, an ill-looking loon, in their company." Elliot
sat her down and wept sore. "They have stolen my little friend," she
cried, "and now he that was so fat I called him Tremouille will go hungry
and lean, and be whipped to make him do his tricks, and I shall never see
him more."

Then she ran out of the chamber, to weep alone, as I guessed, for she was
pitiful and of very tender affection, and dumb things came near about her
heart, as is the manner of many women.

But I made no doubt in my mind that the husband of the ape's old mistress
had stolen him, and I, too, sorrowed for the poor beast that my mistress
loved, and that, in very deed, had been the saving of my own life. Then
I spoke to my master, and said that we must strive to buy her a new ape,
or a little messan dog, to be her playfellow.

But he shook his head. "Say nothing more of the beast," he muttered,
"unless she speaks of him first, and that, methinks, will be never. For
it is not he