he ruddy full-pressed wine.

And yet the fire that thrills us is no less,
Nor coarser, than the fire that they, the great,
Have felt. Our pens are feebler; but the play
Of deep emotions, the fine stir and stress
That mark the soul's rare movements, are, in state,
Equal to those of lines that make men pray.

_Literary Monthly_, 1909.

HEARTS AND TARTS

AN OLD TALE RETOLD

DURR FRIEDLEY ex-'10

There was shouting and hand-clapping from all the gay company, and a
shower of gay words for me when I had done with my singing; and my
lord, greatly pleased, and prophesying that some day when I should be
riper in years I might win the crown of peacock's feathers from the
hands of the Princess Eleanor herself, bade me come on the morrow dawn
to sing an alba under the casement of the bridal chamber. The bride,
too, this new wife that had taken my own lady's place by my lord's
side, she, come but yesterday from her thick-witted Bohemia, and whom,
never loving, I might always truly pity, spoke me fair and besought me
to make verses thenceforth in praise of none save her. I answered as
best I might, but I fear me my speech came but falteringly, what with
my heart beating against my ribs like the armor-smith's hammer, and
the thought uppermost in my mind of the dark business yet to come that
night, before the shame and wrong of it all might be righted--a black
business that none but I in all that company wotted of.

So presently, when all the people made a noisy procession to see the
bridegroom and the bride to their high chamber, I did not go among
them, but stole apart in the shadow and tarried there until the
serving-folk had ceased their scurrying about and the house had grown
quiet in its besotted sleep. Then I crept back to a dark corner by the
great hearth where the stone was warm to the touch and whence I might
see if any passed along the hall. I was all alone there with the
drained goblets, the withering garlands, and the gutted torches, not a
soul abroad, and not a sound save the breathing of the dormant
stag-hounds by the hearth, or the faint disputes of the rats over the
pasty fragments on the table.

Sitting thus, I would go hot of a flash and then cold just as sudden.
Fear? No, by Our Lady, but this was the first time I had ever had a
finger in such a pie as this now baking, and the strangeness of it
made me tremble. But fear, pah! Besides I was in the right, and does
that not make the just