"Not a word more of her, I charge thee!" said Tressilian. "I do well
remember the night you speak of--one of the few happy evenings my life
has known."

"She is gone, then," said the smith, interpreting after his own fashion
the sigh with which Tressilian uttered these words--"she is gone, young,
beautiful, and beloved as she was!--I crave your worship's pardon--I
should have hammered on another theme. I see I have unwarily driven the
nail to the quick."

This speech was made with a mixture of rude feeling which inclined
Tressilian favourably to the poor artisan, of whom before he was
inclined to judge very harshly. But nothing can so soon attract the
unfortunate as real or seeming sympathy with their sorrows.

"I think," proceeded Tressilian, after a minute's silence, "thou wert in
those days a jovial fellow, who could keep a company merry by song, and
tale, and rebeck, as well as by thy juggling tricks--why do I find thee
a laborious handicraftsman, plying thy trade in so melancholy a dwelling
and under such extraordinary circumstances?"

"My story is not long," said the artist, "but your honour had better
sit while you listen to it." So saying, he approached to the fire a
three-footed stool, and took another himself; while Dickie Sludge, or
Flibbertigibbet, as he called the boy, drew a cricket to the smith's
feet, and looked up in his face with features which, as illuminated by
the glow of the forge, seemed convulsed with intense curiosity. "Thou
too," said the smith to him, "shalt learn, as thou well deservest at my
hand, the brief history of my life; and, in troth, it were as well tell
it thee as leave thee to ferret it out, since Nature never packed a
shrewder wit into a more ungainly casket.--Well, sir, if my poor story
may pleasure you, it is at your command, But will you not taste a stoup
of liquor? I promise you that even in this poor cell I have some in
store."

"Speak not of it," said Tressilian, "but go on with thy story, for my
leisure is brief."

"You shall have no cause to rue the delay," said the smith, "for
your horse shall be better fed in the meantime than he hath been this
morning, and made fitter for travel."

With that the artist left the vault, and returned after a few minutes'
interval. Here, also, we pause, that the narrative may commence in
another chapter.

CHAPTER XI.

I say, my lord, can such a subtilty
(But all his craft ye must not wot of me,
And some