munity. Thus, though bold, were they also shy, drinking humbly from
a black-jack quart in the kitchen and vanishing docilely enough when
the sovereign cook bid them be gone with warm words or by flinging over
them ladles of hot soup.

One bright morning, like rabbits peeping from their holes when they
hear the footfall of the hunter, these field ramblers and wayside
peregrinators were all agog, emerging from grassy cover and thicket
retreat, to gaze open-mouthed after a gay cavalcade that issued from
the castle gate, and rode southward with waving banner and piercing
trumpet note.

"The king, knaves!" cried a grimy estray with bells upon his person
that jingled like those of a Jewish high priest, to a group of players
and gamesters. "Already my mouth waters at the thoughts of the wedding
feast, and the scraps and bones that will be thrown away. There I
warrant you we'll all find hearty cheer."

"Why are fools ever welcome at a wedding?" asked a singing scholar.

"Because there are two in the ceremony, and the rest make the chorus,"
answered a philandering mime.

"And our merry monarch goeth down the road to meet one of the two,"
said a close-cropped rogue.

"Well, he's a brave knight to come so far to yield himself captive--to
a woman," returned the student. "As Horace saith--"

"Thou calumniator! shrimp of a man!" exclaimed a dark-browed drab
dressed like a gipsy, seizing the scholar's short doublet. "An I get
at you--"

"Take the garment, you harridan, not the man," he retorted, slipping
deftly out of the jerkin and dancing away to a safe distance.

"Ha! there's wedded bliss for you!" laughed a man in Franciscan attire,
a rough rascal disguised as one of those priests called "God's fools"
or "Christ's fools." "A week ago, when I married them, they were
billing and cooing. But to your holes, children! When the king
returns he would not have his guest gaze upon such scarecrows and
trollops. Disperse, and Beelzebub take you!" And as the group
scattered the sound of beating horses' hoofs died away in the distance.

Francis was unusually good-humored that day. Apprised by a herald that
the duke and his followers were nearing the castle, he had sent the
messenger back announcing a trysting-place, and now rode forth to meet
his guest and escort him with honor to the castle. Upon a noble steed,
black as night, the monarch sat; the saddle and trappings crimson in
color; the stirrup and bit, of gold; a j