d every lash which he laid on thee,
he always was wont to say, he spared the hangman a labour."

"One would have thought he left him little to do then," said the clerk;
"and yet Goodman Thong had no sinecure of it with our friend, after
all."

"VOTO A DIOS!" exclaimed Lambourne, his patience appearing to fail him,
as he snatched his broad, slouched hat from the table and placed it on
his head, so that the shadow gave the sinister expression of a Spanish
brave to eyes and features which naturally boded nothing pleasant.
"Hark'ee, my masters--all is fair among friends, and under the rose; and
I have already permitted my worthy uncle here, and all of you, to use
your pleasure with the frolics of my nonage. But I carry sword and
dagger, my good friends, and can use them lightly too upon occasion. I
have learned to be dangerous upon points of honour ever since I served
the Spaniard, and I would not have you provoke me to the degree of
falling foul."

"Why, what would you do?" said the clerk.

"Ay, sir, what would you do?" said the mercer, bustling up on the other
side of the table.

"Slit your throat, and spoil your Sunday's quavering, Sir Clerk,"
said Lambourne fiercely; "cudgel you, my worshipful dealer in flimsy
sarsenets, into one of your own bales."

"Come, come," said the host, interposing, "I will have no swaggering
here.--Nephew, it will become you best to show no haste to take offence;
and you, gentlemen, will do well to remember, that if you are in an inn,
still you are the inn-keeper's guests, and should spare the honour
of his family.--I protest your silly broils make me as oblivious as
yourself; for yonder sits my silent guest as I call him, who hath been
my two days' inmate, and hath never spoken a word, save to ask for his
food and his reckoning--gives no more trouble than a very peasant--pays
his shot like a prince royal--looks but at the sum total of the
reckoning, and does not know what day he shall go away. Oh, 'tis a jewel
of a guest! and yet, hang-dog that I am, I have suffered him to sit
by himself like a castaway in yonder obscure nook, without so much as
asking him to take bite or sup along with us. It were but the right
guerdon of my incivility were he to set off to the Hare and Tabor before
the night grows older."

With his white napkin gracefully arranged over his left arm, his velvet
cap laid aside for the moment, and his best silver flagon in his right
hand, mine host walked up to the so