ervice, than your Majesty's."

"O' my saul,--if I thought so," said the monarch, as he threw down a
spoonful of buttered pease, "I would send him to the Tower, and he
should write a book on Hercules his distaff."

"Or Omphale's spindle," said a voice at the lower end of the hall,
which, issuing from a mask, closely fitted, sounded wondrously hollow
and portentous. A profound silence ensued--all eyes being turned towards
the speaker, who was no less a personage than the first household god,
attired in his proper suit. He approached the king's table, waving his
hand in token of attention--

"The knight ye speak of, mark me well,
I've just drawn from the castle-well!"

"Mercy on us," cried Sir Richard Hoghton. "The draw-well is more than
eighty yards deep. Thou art a lying deity, and shalt be banished from
this bright Olympus."

But the deity, nothing abashed, thus continued--

"How came he thus, I dare not tell;
My brother may the mystery dispel."

He stooped down--rising again to the astonished eyes of the fair dames
and nobles at the upper bench, in the forester's habit of Kendal green,
with cloak and doublet of the same colour.

"What's now?" said James. "Witchery and fause negromancie, o' my troth.
'Tis treason, Sir Richard, to use glamour in the king's presence."

But the sylvan god continued in the doggerel of his predecessor--

"Sir John to be forgiven would hope;
He had been drowned, but for the rope!"

"Ay," said the king, chuckling at this opportunity, purposely given, for
a display of his wit--"he'll be hanged--na doot, na doot."

"Prythee, Sylvanus, or whatever thou be, bring Sir John hither, that he
may dry his web in the hot sunshine of a lady's glance," said Villiers,
with an ill-suppressed sneer.

Again this Proteus was transformed. Doffing his habit, Sir John Finett
stood confessed before them. He knelt penitently before the king, humbly
assuring his Majesty that he had been preparing this device, and many
others, to please and surprise him; but that, through the bungling of
some, and the bashfulness of others, he was obliged to enact the parts
himself. This excuse the king was graciously pleased to accept,
commending him for his great diligence and zeal.

The night now wore on with much outward show of mirth and revelry; but
the king went early to rest, purposing to rise betimes.

On the following day he went out again with a great company, and killed
a brace of