"You say well, Master Peveril," said the dwarf; "and I have given proofs
both of bearing and forbearing. Yes, sir, there was not that thing which
my most royal mistress, Henrietta Maria, could have required of me, that
I would not have complied with, sir; I was her sworn servant, both
in war and in festival, in battle and pageant, sir. At her Majesty's
particular request, I once condescended to become--ladies, you know,
have strange fancies--to become the tenant, for a time, of the interior
of a pie."

"Of a pie?" said Julian, somewhat amazed.

"Yes, sir, of a pie. I hope you find nothing risible in my
complaisance?" replied his companion, something jealously.

"Not I, sir," said Peveril; "I have other matters than laughter in my
head at present."

"So had I," said the dwarfish champion, "when I found myself imprisoned
in a huge platter, of no ordinary dimensions you may be assured, since I
could lie at length in it, and when I was entombed, as it were, in walls
of standing crust, and a huge cover of pastry, the whole constituting
a sort of sarcophagus, of size enough to have recorded the epitaph of
a general officer or an archbishop on the lid. Sir, notwithstanding
the conveniences which were made to give me air, it was more like being
buried alive than aught else which I could think of."

"I conceive it, sir," said Julian.

"Moreover, sir," continued the dwarf, "there were few in the secret,
which was contrived for the Queen's divertisement; for advancing of
which I would have crept into a filbert nut, had it been possible;
and few, as I said, being private in the scheme, there was a risk of
accidents. I doubted, while in my darksome abode, whether some awkward
attendant might not have let me fall, as I have seen happen to a venison
pasty; or whether some hungry guest might not anticipate the moment of
my resurrection, by sticking his knife into my upper crust. And though I
had my weapons about me, young man, as has been my custom in every case
of peril, yet, if such a rash person had plunged deep into the bowels of
the supposed pasty, my sword and dagger could barely have served me to
avenge, assuredly not to prevent, either of these catastrophes."

"Certainly I do so understand it," said Julian, who began, however, to
feel that the company of little Hudson, talkative as he showed himself,
was likely rather to aggravate than to alleviate the inconveniences of a
prison.

"Nay," continued the little man, en