as reward, he was
dismissed with nothing but the piece of wood upon which it had been hung.

The badger further proceeded to relate that Reynard had wooed Gieremund
seven years before, when she was still unmated, and that if Isegrim chose
to consider that an insult, it was only on a par with the rest of his
accusations, for the king could readily see that Reynard was sorely injured
instead of being guilty.

Then, encouraged by the favorable impression he had produced, Grimbart
airily disposed of the cases of Wackerlos and Hintze by proving that they
had both stolen the disputed sausage, after which he went on to say that
Reynard had undertaken to instruct Lampe the hare in psalmody, and that the
ill treatment which the panther had described was only a little wholesome
castigation inflicted by the teacher upon a lazy and refractory pupil.

"Should not the master his pupil
Sometimes chastise when he will not observe, and is stubborn in evil?
If boys were never punished, were thoughtlessness always passed over,
Were bad behavior allowed, how would our juveniles grow up?"

These plausible explanations were not without their effect, and when
Grimbart went on to declare that, ever since Nobel proclaimed a general
truce and amnesty among all the animals of the forest, Reynard had turned
hermit and spent all his time in fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, the
complaint was about to be dismissed.

[Sidenote: Story of Henning and the Cock.] Suddenly, however, Henning the
cock appeared, followed by his two sons, Kryant and Kantart, bearing the
mangled remains of a hen upon a bier. In broken accents the bereaved father
related how happily he had dwelt in a convent henyard, with the ten sons
and fourteen daughters which his excellent consort had hatched and brought
up in a single summer. His only anxiety had been caused by the constant
prowling of Reynard, who, however, had been successfully at a distance by
the watchdogs. But when the general truce had been proclaimed, the dogs
were dismissed. Reynard, in the garb of a monk, had made his way into the
henyard to show Henning the royal proclamation with the attached seal, and
to assure him of his altered mode of living.

Thus reassured, Henning had led his family out into the forest, where,
alas! Reynard was lurking, and where he killed all but five of Henning's
promising brood. They had not only been killed, but devoured, with