tantly
struck up and whistled one of Cul de Jatte's devil's ditties, and played
it on the psaltery to boot. Thou knowest Heaven hath bestowed on me a
rare whistle, both for compass and tune. And with me whistling bright
and full this sprightly air, and making the wires slow when the tune did
gallop, and tripping when the tune did amble, or I did stop and shake on
one note like a lark i' the air, they were like to eat me; but looking
round, lo! my master had given way to his itch, and there was his hat
on the ground, and copper pouring in. I deemed it cruel to whistle the
bread out of poverty's pouch; so broke off and away; yet could not get
clear so swift, but both men and women did slobber me sore, and smelled
all of garlic. 'There, master,' said I, 'I call that cleaving the divell
in twain and keeping his white half.' Said he, 'Bon Bec, I have made
a good bargain.' Then he bade me stay where I was while he went to the
Holy Land. I stayed, and he leaped the churchyard dike, and the sexton
was digging a grave, and my master chaffered with him, and came back
with a knuckle bone. But why he clept a churchyard Holy Land, that I
learned not then, but after dinner. I was colouring the armories of a
little inn; and he sat by me most peaceable, a cutting, and filing, and
polishing bones, sedately; so I speered was not honest work sweet? 'As
rain water,' said he, mocking. 'What was he a making?' 'A pair of bones
to play on with thee; and with the refuse a St. Anthony's thumb and
a St. Martin's little finger, for the devout.' The vagabone! And now,
sweet Margaret, thou seest our manner of life faring Rhineward. I with
the two arts I had least prized or counted on for bread was welcome
everywhere; too poor now to fear robbers, yet able to keep both master
and man on the road. For at night I often made a portraiture of the
innkeeper or his dame, and so went richer from an inn; the which it is
the lot of few. But my master despised this even way of life. 'I love
ups and downs,' said he. And certes he lacked them not. One day he would
gather more than I in three; another, to hear his tale, it had rained
kicks all day in lieu of 'saltees,' and that is pennies. Yet even then
at heart he despised me for a poor mechanical soul, and scorned my arts,
extolling his own, the art of feigning.

"Natheless, at odd times was he ill at his ease. Going through the town
of Aix, we came upon a beggar walking, fast by one hand to a cart-tail,
and th