tion
of Master of the Dance at his sumptuous court.

As to "worldly goods," as some of the new religionists call wealth, I
was very comfortably off; having inherited from my father, one of the
counselors of Henry VII, a very competent fortune indeed. How my
worthy father contrived to save from the greedy hand of that rich old
miser so great a fortune, I am sure I can not tell. He was the only
man of my knowledge who did it; for the old king had a reach as long
as the kingdom, and, upon one pretext or another, appropriated to
himself everything on which he could lay his hands. My father,
however, was himself pretty shrewd in money matters, having inherited
along with his fortune a rare knack at keeping it. His father was a
goldsmith in the time of King Edward, and enjoyed the marked favor of
that puissant prince.

Being thus in a position of affluence, I cared nothing for the fact
that little or no emolument went with the office; it was the honor
which delighted me. Besides, I was thereby an inmate of the king's
palace, and brought into intimate relations with the court, and above
all, with the finest ladies of the land--the best company a man can
keep, since it ennobles his mind with better thoughts, purifies his
heart with cleaner motives, and makes him gentle without detracting
from his strength. It was an office any lord of the kingdom might have
been proud to hold.

Now, some four or five years after my induction into this honorable
office, there came to court news of a terrible duel fought down in
Suffolk, out of which only one of the four combatants had come
alive--two, rather, but one of them in a condition worse than death.
The first survivor was a son of Sir William Brandon, and the second
was a man called Sir Adam Judson. The story went that young Brandon
and his elder brother, both just home from the continental wars, had
met Judson at an Ipswich inn, where there had been considerable
gambling among them. Judson had won from the brothers a large sum of
money which they had brought home; for, notwithstanding their youth,
the elder being but twenty-six and the younger about twenty-four years
of age, they had gained great honor and considerable profit in wars,
especially the younger, whose name was Charles.

It is a little hard to fight for money and then to lose it by a single
spot upon the die, but such is the fate of him who plays, and a
philosopher will swallow his ill luck and take to fighting for more