If poor Troubadour had not cast a shoe, we should not have had this trouble.

Nay, I must have your arm: for, though I speak lightly, now that all is happily over I am as frightened as my brave Roland.

See how his chest heaves, and his dear feathers all awry--the little knight who would not have his lady mishandled." So she prattled on to her hawk, while Alleyne walked by her side, stealing a glance from time to time at this queenly and wayward woman.

In silence they wandered together over the velvet turf and on through the broad Minstead woods, where the old lichen-draped beeches threw their circles of black shadow upon the sunlit sward.
"You have no wish, then, to hear my story ?" said she, at last.
"If it pleases you to tell it me," he answered.
"Oh!" she cried tossing her head, "if it is of so little interest to you, we had best let it bide." "Nay," said he eagerly, "I would fain hear it." "You have a right to know it, if you have lost a brother's favor through it.

And yet----Ah well, you are, as I understand, a clerk, so I must think of you as one step further in orders, and make you my father-confessor.