e jester.

"They would prevent you."

"Who is the leader?"

"The man with the boar," answered the scamp-student. "But it is the
morio who usually kills their victims."

The jester glanced at the colossal monster, repugnant in deformity, and
then at the girl, who was tapping impatiently on the table with her
white fingers. The fool's color came and went; what human strength
might stand against that frightful prodigy of nature?

"Is there no way to escape?" he asked.

"Alas! I can but warn; not advise," said the scholar. "Already the
leader suspects me."

A half-shiver ran through him. In the presence of actual and seemingly
assured death he had appeared calm, resigned, a Socrates in
temperament; before the mere prospect of danger the apprehensive
thief-and-fugitive elements of his nature uprose. He would meet, when
need be, the grim-visaged monster of dissolution with the dignity of a
stoic, but by habit disdained not to dodge the shadow with the
practised agility of a filcher and scamp. So the lower part of his
moral being began to cower; he glanced furtively at the company.

"Yes; I am sure I have put my own neck in it," he muttered. "I must
devise a way to save it. I have it. We must seem to quarrel." And
rising, he closed his book deliberately.

"Fool!" he said in a sharp voice. "Your argument is as scurvy as your
Latin. Thou, a philosopher! A bookless, shallow dabbler! So I treat
you and your reasonings!"

Whereupon, with a quick gesture, he threw the dregs of his glass in the
face of the jester. So suddenly and unexpectedly was it done, the
other sprang angrily from his seat and half drew his sword. A moment
they stood thus, the fool with his hand menacingly upon the hilt; the
scamp-scholar continuing to confront him with undiminished volubility.

[Illustration: He threw the dregs of his glass in the face of the
jester.]

"A smatterer! an ignoramus! a dunce!" he repeated in high-pitched tones
to the amusement of the company.

"Make a ring for the two monks, my masters," cried the man with the
boar. "Then let each state his case with bludgeon or dagger."

"With bludgeon or dagger!" echoed the excited voice of the morio, whose
appearance had undergone a transformation. The indescribable vacancy
with which he had listened to the minstrel was replaced by an
expression of revolting malignity.

The jestress half-arose, her face once more white, her dark eyes
fastened on the fool. B