ittle of your trade, I trow. Here is a bow dressed as it should be; but
it would, as you say, be the better for a white band to mark the true
nocking point in the center of this red wrapping of silk. Leave it and I
will tend to it anon. And you, Wat? A fresh head on yonder stele?
Lord, that a man should carry four trades under one hat, and be bowyer,
fletcher, stringer and headmaker! Four men's work for old Bartholomew
and one man's pay!"

"Nay, say no more about that," growled an old wizened bowman, with a
brown-parchment skin and little beady eyes. "It is better in these days
to mend a bow than to bend one. You who never looked a Frenchman in the
face are pricked off for ninepence a day, and I, who have fought five
stricken fields, can earn but fourpence."

"It is in my mind, John of Tuxford, that you have looked in the face
more pots of mead than Frenchmen," said the old bowyer. "I am swinking
from dawn to night, while you are guzzling in an alestake. How now,
youngster? Overbowed? Put your bow in the tiller. It draws at sixty
pounds--not a pennyweight too much for a man of your inches. Lay more
body to it, lad, and it will come to you. If your bow be not stiff, how
can you hope for a twenty-score flight. Feathers? Aye, plenty and of the
best. Here, peacock at a groat each. Surely a dandy archer like you, Tom
Beverley, with gold earrings in your ears, would have no feathering but
peacocks?"

"So the shaft fly straight, I care not of the feather," said the bowman,
a tall young Yorkshireman, counting out pennies on the palm of his horny
hand.

"Gray goose-feathers are but a farthing. These on the left are a
halfpenny, for they are of the wild goose, and the second feather of a
fenny goose is worth more than the pinion of a tame one. These in the
brass tray are dropped feathers, and a dropped feather is better than
a plucked one. Buy a score of these, lad, and cut them saddle-backed or
swine-backed, the one for a dead shaft and the other for a smooth flyer,
and no man in the company will swing a better-fletched quiver over his
shoulder."

It chanced that the opinion of the bowyer on this and other points
differed from that of Long Ned of Widdington, a surly straw-bearded
Yorkshireman, who had listened with a sneering face to his counsel. Now
he broke in suddenly upon the bowyer's talk. "You would do better to
sell bows than to try to teach others how to use them," said he; "for
indeed, Bartholomew, that head of th