.

SACKCLOTH AND MOTLEY.
The fool and the friar had fallen a-quarrelling, and--to the shame of the friar and the glory of the fool be it spoken--their subject of contention was a woman.

Now the friar, finding himself no match for the fool in words, and being as broad and stout of girth and limb as the other was puny and misshapen, he had plucked off his sandal that with it he might drive the full force of his arguments through the jester's skull.

At that the fool, being a very coward, had fled incontinently through the trees.
Running, like the fool he was, with his head turned to learn whether the good father followed him, he never saw the figure that lay half-hidden in the bracken, and might never have guessed its presence but that tripping over it he shot forward, with a tinkle of bells, on to his crooked nose.
He sat up with a groan, which was answered by an oath from the man into whose sides he had dug his flying feet.

The two looked at one another in surprise, tempered with anger in the one and dismay in the other.
"A good awakening to you, noble sir," quoth the fool politely; for by the mien and inches of the man he had roused, he thought that courtesy might serve him best.
The other eyed him with interest, as well he might; for an odder figure it would be hard to find in Italy.
Hunched of back, under-sized, and fragile of limb, he was arrayed in doublet, hose and hood, the half of which was black the other crimson, whilst on his shoulders fell from that same hood--which tightly framed his ugly little face--a foliated cape, from every point of which there hung a tiny silver bell that glimmered in the sunlight, and tinkled as he moved.