nacadie understood the challenge and the tone. He was used to
rendering such service when his mistress repented of her sins. Yet he
gave his tail feathers a slight flirt and quavered some guttural to
sustain his part in the conversation, and to beg that he might be
excused from holding the sword this time. As she continued to prod him,
however, he struck her with his beak. Le Rossignol was human in never
finding herself able to bear the punishment she courted. She flew at the
swan, he spread his wings for ardent warfare, and they both dropped to
the stone floor in a whirlwind of mandolin, arms, and feathers. The
dwarf kept her hold on him until he cowered and lay with his neck along
the pavement.

"Thou art a Turk, a rascal, a horned beast!" panted Le Rossignol.
Shubenacadie quavered plaintively, and all her wrath was gone. She
spread out one of his wings and smoothed the plumes. She nursed his head
in her lap and sung to him. Two of his feathers, plucked out in the
contest, she put in her bosom. He flirted his tail and gathered himself
again to his feet, and she broke her loaf and fed him and poured water
into her palm for his bill.

Le Rossignol esteemed the military dignity given to her imprisonment,
and she was a hardy midget who could bear untold exposure when wandering
at her own will. She therefore received with disgust her lady's summons
to come down long before the day was spent, the messenger being only
Zelie.

"Ah--h, mademoiselle," warned the maid, stumping ponderously out of the
stone stairway, "are you about to mount that swan again?"

"Who has ever seen me mount him?"

"I would be sworn there are a dozen men in the fort that have."

"But you never have."

"No. I have been absent with my lady."

"Well, you shall see me now."

The dwarf flung herself on Shubenacadie's back, and thrust her feet down
under his wings. He began to rise, and expanded, stretching his neck
forward, and Zelie uttered a yell of terror. The weird little woman
leaped off and turned her laughing beak toward the terrified maid. Her
ear-hoops swung as she rolled her mocking head.

"Oh, if it frightens you I will not ride to-day," she said. Shubenacadie
sailed across the battlements, and though they could no longer see him
they knew he had taken to the river.

"If I tell my lady this," shivered Zelie, "she will never let you out of
the turret. And she but this moment sent me to call you down out of the
chill east wind."

"