e been as brave. But marvel and consider and humble you
in the dust to think that a man with my brain pan and all it holds
could have been so cozened. For sure, a dolt like you would have been
stripped more clean till you had neither nails to your toes nor hair
to your eyebrows.'

Hal Poins snarled that Culpepper would have been shaved too but that
red hair stunk in the nostrils even of cozeners and thieves.

Culpepper wagged his head from side to side.

'This is a main soft stone,' he said; 'I am main weary. When the stone
grows hard, which is a sign that I shall no longer be minded to rest,
I will break thy back with a cudgel.'

Poins stamped his foot with rage and tears filled his eyes.

'An thou had a sword!' he said. 'An only thou had a sword!'

'A year-old carrot to baste thee with!' Culpepper answered. 'Swords
are for men!' He turned to Hogben, who was sitting on the ground
furbishing his pikehead. 'Heard you the like of my tale?' he asked
lazily.

'Oh aye!' the Lincolnshire man answered. 'The simple folk of Normandy
are simple only because they have no suitors. But they ha' learned
that marlock from the sailors of Rye town. For in Rye town, which is
the sinkhole of Sussex, you will meet every morning ten travellers
travelling to France in the livery of Father Adam. Normans can learn,'
he added sententiously, 'as the beasts of the field can learn from a
man. My father had a ewe lamb that danced a pavane to my pipe on the
farm of Sallowford that you sold to buy a woman the third part of a
gown.'

'Why! Art Nick Hogben?' Culpepper said.

'Hast that question answered,' Hogben said. 'Now answer me one. Liedst
thou when saidst what thou saidst of that wurman?'

Culpepper on the stone swung his legs vaingloriously:

'I sold three farms to buy her a gown,' he said.

'Aye!' Nick Hogben answered. 'So thou saidst in Stamford town three
years gone by. And thou saidst more and the manner of it. But betwixt
the buying the gowns and the more of it lie many things. As this: Did
she take the gown of thee? Or as this: Having taken the gown of thee,
did she pay thee in the kind payment should be made in?'

Culpepper looked up at him with a sharp snarl.

'For--' and Nick Hogben shook his head sagaciously, 'Stamford town
believed the more and the manner of it, and Kat Howard's name is up in
the town of Stamford. But I have not yet chiselled out the great piece
that shall come from my pike when certain sure I am that