the next ten years to come!" With these words the friar
threw down his reckoning, and moved majestically to the door.

"An' I might trust you!" said Tim's father, laying hold of the friar's
serge.

"Ye may, ye may!" cried the leader of the tymbesteres, starting up from
the lap of her soldier, "for it is Friar Bungey himself!"

A movement of astonishment and terror was universal. "Friar Bungey
himself!" repeated the burly impostor. "Right, lassie, right; and he now
goes to the palace of the Tower, to mutter good spells in King Edward's
ear,--spells to defeat the malignant ones, and to lower the price of
beer. Wax wobiscum!"

With that salutation, more benevolent than accurate, the friar vanished
from the room; the chief of the tymbesteres leaped lightly on the table,
put one foot on the soldier's shoulder, and sprang through the open
lattice. She found the friar in the act of mounting a sturdy mule, which
had been tied to a post by the door.

"Fie, Graul Skellet! Fie, Graul!" said the conjurer "Respect for my
serge. We must not be noted together out of door in the daylight.
There's a groat for thee. Vade, execrabilis,--that is, good-day to thee,
pretty rogue!"

"A word, friar, a word. Wouldst thou have the old man burned, drowned,
or torn piecemeal? He hath a daughter too, who once sought to mar our
trade with her gittern; a daughter, then in a kirtle that I would not
have nimmed from a hedge, but whom I last saw in sarcenet and lawn, with
a great lord for her fere." The tymbestere's eyes shone with malignant
envy, as she added, "Graul Skellet loves not to see those who have
worn worsted and say walk in sarcenet and lawn. Graul Skellet loves not
wenches who have lords for their feres, and yet who shrink from Graul
and her sisters as the sound from the leper."

"Fegs," answered the friar, impatiently, "I know naught against the
daughter,--a pretty lass, but too high for my kisses. And as for the
father, I want not the man's life,--that is, not very specially,--but
his model, his mechanical. He may go free, if that can be compassed; if
not, why, the model at all risks. Serve me in this."

"And thou wilt teach me the last tricks of the cards, and thy great art
of making phantoms glide by on the wall?"

"Bring the model intact, and I will teach thee more, Graul,--the dead
man's candle, and the charm of the newt; and I'll give thee, to boot,
the Gaul of the parricide that thou hast prayed me so oft for. Hum! thou
h