Villains that I feed and clothe." "Surely," said Matilda, "it is not villany to love me: if it be, I should be sorry my father were an honest man." The baron relaxed his muscles into a smile.

"Or my lover either," added Matilda.

The baron looked grim again.
"For your lover," said the baron, "you may give God thanks of him.

He is as arrant a knave as ever poached." "What, for hunting the king's deer ?" said Matilda.

"Have I not heard you rail at the forest laws by the hour ?" "Did you ever hear me," said the baron, "rail myself out of house and land?
If I had done that, then were I a knave." "My lover," said Matilda, "is a brave man, and a true man, and a generous man, and a young man, and a handsome man; aye, and an honest man too." "How can he be an honest man," said the baron, "when he has neither house nor land, which are the better part of a man ?" "They are but the husk of a man," said Matilda, "the worthless coat of the chesnut: the man himself is the kernel." "The man is the grape stone," said the baron, "and the pulp of the melon.