ast a girl in thy troop who hath a blinking eye that well pleases me;
but go now, and obey me. Work before play, and grace before pudding!"

The tymbestere nodded, snapped her fingers in the air, and humming no
holy ditty, returned to the house through the doorway.

This short conference betrays to the reader the relations, mutually
advantageous, which subsisted between the conjuror and the tymbesteres.
Their troop (the mothers, perchance, of the generation we treat of)
had been familiar to the friar in his old capacity of mountebank, or
tregetour, and in his clerical and courtly elevation, he did not disdain
an ancient connection that served him well with the populace; for these
grim children of vice seemed present in every place, where pastime was
gay, or strife was rampant,--in peace, at the merry-makings and the
hostelries; in war, following the camp, and seen, at night, prowling
through the battlefields to dispatch the wounded and to rifle the slain:
in merrymaking, hostelry, or in camp, they could thus still spread the
fame of Friar Bungey, and uphold his repute both for terrible lore and
for hearty love of the commons.

Nor was this all; both tymbesteres and conjuror were fortune-tellers by
profession. They could interchange the anecdotes each picked up in their
different lines. The tymbestere could thus learn the secrets of gentle
and courtier, the conjuror those of the artisan and mechanic.

Unconscious of the formidable dispositions of their neighbours, Sibyll
and Warner were inhaling the sweet air of the early spring in their
little garden. His disgrace had affected the philosopher less than might
be supposed. True, that the loss of the king's favour was the deferring
indefinitely--perhaps for life--any practical application of his adored
theory; and yet, somehow or other, the theory itself consoled him. At
the worst, he should find some disciple, some ingenious student, more
fortunate than himself, to whom he could bequeath the secret, and who,
when Adam was in his grave, would teach the world to revere his name.
Meanwhile, his time was his own; he was lord of a home, though ruined
and desolate; he was free, with his free thoughts; and therefore, as he
paced the narrow garden, his step was lighter, his mind less absent than
when parched with feverish fear and hope for the immediate practical
success of a principle which was to be tried before the hazardous
tribunal of prejudice and ignorance.

"My child,