mies before lukewarm friends!"

"Prithee, general," said the priest, with a placid smile, during which
his eyes seemed to shrink within their dim sockets, "be not
over-hasty. We cannot reasonably hope that they should flock to our
standard almost ere we unfurl it for their gathering."

"Your speech hath a reasonable property in it," replied Sir Thomas,
"and, as we may say, savoureth of great judgment, which, being of an
excellent nature in itself, doth thereby control and exercise, in its
own capacity, the nature and excellence of all others."

This formidable issue of words was delivered with much earnestness of
enunciation; but of its use or meaning, probably, the speaker was
fully as ignorant as his hearers. Even at the fountain-head his ideas
were sufficiently obscure, but when fairly rolling forth from the
spring, they sometimes begat such a froth and turbidity in their
course, that no reasonable discernment could fathom their depth or
bearing.

A short silence was the result, which none, for a while, cared to
disturb, lest he should betray his lack of understanding in dark
sentences.

"We know your loyalty," said the king, "which hath a sufficient
impress on it to pass current without scrutiny. Your example, Sir
Thomas, will be of competent weight, without the casting or imposition
of vain words into the scale. We acknowledge your ready zeal in our
just cause."

"Your highness' grace, my liege," said Lincoln, ere Sir Thomas could
gather words for a fitting reply, "doth honey your confections well.
Men swallow them without wincing or wry faces."

Sir Thomas would not thus be deprived of his right to a reply; and was
just commencing with a suitable attitude for the purpose, when lo! the
trenchant knight, who sat on a small stool beside the corner buttress,
with a loud cry, suddenly disappeared, and a gaping cavity in the
floor sufficiently accounted for the precipitate mode of his
departure. Uprising on the ruins of Sir Thomas, started forth a
grotesque figure from the chasm, clad in coarse attire, a ludicrous
solemnity on his strange and uncouth visage, as, with a shrill and
squeaking tone, he cried--

"Ay, ay, masters; but my master will gi'e me a blessing for the
finding o' this mouse-nest; and a priest's blessin' is worth a king's
curse any time; and so good-morrow, knaves."

"Stay," said Lincoln, seizing the intruder, none other than our
light-witted acquaintance, "lang-nebbit Dick," whose prying
p