ing. Silence was
immediately enforced, while the assembly anxiously awaited the
interrogation of this intolerable coveter of barley-drink.

"Art thou again at thy freaks?" said the Thane, angrily: "thou hast soon
forgotten the stocks and the whipping-post on Easter-day. It were well
that Nicholas should refresh thy memory in this matter."

At this dreaded name the poor wretch fell on his face.

"Please ye, my lord," said he, hardly raising his head from the floor,
"I am here but for a witness beliken. I am breeding of no broil, save
an' my gossip o' yesternight drew me into a tussle with old Split-Feet
and his company."

He groaned, but not without considerable effort, and his face puckered
in a heap at the recollection.

"What!--the foul fiend helped thee to thy liquor, I trow?" said Gamel,
hastily. "Think not to foist thy fooleries upon me. Should I find thee
with a lie on thy tongue, the hide were as well off thy shoulders. To
thy speech--quick, what sawest thou?"

"I will give it all, withouten a word but what the blessed saints would
avouch," said the terrified supplicant, whose once fiery face was now
blanched, or rather dyed of a dull and various blue.

"I was wending home from Merland, where I had been helping Dan the smith
to his luckpenny, when as I took the path-road down yonder unlucky hill
to the ford, not thinking of the de'il's workmen that had flown off with
the church the night before, I was whistling, or, it mayhap,
singing,--or--or--I am not just particular to know how it was, for the
matter of it; but at any rate I was getting up, having tumbled down the
steep almost nigh to the bottom, and I thought my eyes had strucken
fire, for I saw lights frisking and frolicking up and down the hill.
Then I sat down to watch, and, sure enough, such a puck-fisted rabble,
without cloak or hosen, I never beheld--all hurry-scurry up the hill,
and some of the like were on the gallop down again. They were shouting,
and mocking, and laughing, like so many stark-mad fools at a May-feast.
They strid twenty paces at a jump, with burdens that two of the best
oxen about the manor had not shifted the length of my thumbnail. 'Tis
some unlucky dream, said I, rubbing the corners of my eyes, and trying
to pinch myself awake. Just then I saw a crowd of the busiest of 'em
running up from the river, and making directly towards the steep bank
below where I sat. They were hurrying a great log of timber, which they
threw down