n foolish knight. Shall elephants catch flies, or Hurlo-Thrumbo stain
his club with brains of Dagonet the jester? Be mollified; leave thy
caverned grumblings, like Etna when its windy wrath is past, and
discourse eloquence from thy central omphalos, like Pythoness
ventriloquizing."

"If you do begin laughing at me too, Mr. Leigh ----" said the giant's
clock-face, in a piteous tone.

"I laugh not. Art thou not Ordulf the earl, and I thy humblest squire?
Speak up, my lord; your cousin, my Lady Bath, commands you."

And at last the giant began:--

"A giant I, Earl Ordulf men me call,--
'Gainst Paynim foes Devonia's champion tall;
In single fight six thousand Turks I slew;
Pull'd off a lion's head, and ate it too:
With one shrewd blow, to let St. Edward in,
I smote the gates of Exeter in twain;
Till aged grown, by angels warn'd in dream,
I built an abbey fair by Tavy stream.
But treacherous time hath tripped my glories up,
The stanch old hound must yield to stancher pup;
Here's one so tall as I, and twice so bold,
Where I took only cuffs, takes good red gold.
From pole to pole resound his wondrous works,
Who slew more Spaniards than I e'er slew Turks;
I strode across the Tavy stream: but he
Strode round the world and back; and here 'a be!"

"Oh, bathos!" said Lady Bath, while the 'prentices shouted applause. "Is
this hedge-bantling to be fathered on you, Mr. Frank?"

"It is necessary, by all laws of the drama, madam," said Frank, with a
sly smile, "that the speech and the speaker shall fit each other. Pass
on, Earl Ordulf; a more learned worthy waits."

Whereon, up came a fresh member of the procession; namely, no less
a person than Vindex Brimblecombe, the ancient schoolmaster, with
five-and-forty boys at his heels, who halting, pulled out his
spectacles, and thus signified his forgiveness of his whilom broken
head:--

"That the world should have been circumnavigated, ladies and gentles,
were matter enough of jubilation to the student of Herodotus and Plato,
Plinius and ---- ahem! much more when the circumnavigators are Britons;
more, again, when Damnonians."

"Don't swear, master," said young Will Cary.

"Gulielme Cary, Gulielme Cary, hast thou forgotten thy--"

"Whippings? Never, old lad! Go on; but let not the license of the
scholar overtop the modesty of the Christian."

"More again, as I said, when, incolae, inhabitants