hen's claws, as that diabolism would
fain snap off my digits. But the war will carry Hastings away in its
whirlwind; and, in danger, the duchess is my slave, and will bear me
through all. So, thou mayst bring the girl; and strangle her not; for
no good ever comes of a murder,--unless, indeed, it be absolutely
necessary!"

"I know the men who will help me, bold ribauds, whom I will guerdon
myself; for I want not thy coins, but thy craft. When the curfew has
tolled, and the bat hunts the moth, we will bring thee the quarry--"

Graul turned; but as she gained the door, she stopped, and said
abruptly, throwing back her hood,--

"What age dost thou deem me?"

"Marry," quoth the friar, "an' I had not seen thee on thy mother's knee
when she followed my stage of tregetour, I should have guessed thee for
thirty; but thou hast led too jolly a life to look still in the blossom.
Why speer'st thou the question?"

"Because when trooper and ribaud say to me, 'Graul, thou art too worn
and too old to drink of our cup and sit in the lap, to follow the young
fere to the battle, and weave the blithe dance in the fair,' I would
depart from my sisters, and have a hut of my own, and a black cat
without a white hair, and steal herbs by the new moon, and bones from
the charnel, and curse those whom I hate, and cleave the misty air on
a besom, like Mother Halkin of Edmonton. Ha, ha! Master, thou shalt
present me then to the Sabbat. Graul has the mettle for a bonny witch!"

The tymbestere vanished with a laugh. The friar muttered a paternoster
for once, perchance, devoutly, and after having again deliberately
scanned the disjecta membra of the Eureka, gravely took forth a duck's
egg from his cupboard, and applied the master-agent of the machine which
Warner hoped was to change the face of the globe to the only practical
utility it possessed to the mountebank's comprehension.

CHAPTER V. THE MEETING OF HASTINGS AND KATHERINE.

The next morning, while Edward was engaged in levying from his opulent
citizens all the loans he could extract, knowing that gold is the sinew
of war; while Worcester was manning the fortress of the Tower, in which
the queen, then near her confinement, was to reside during the campaign;
while Gloucester was writing commissions to captains and barons to raise
men; while Sir Anthony Lord Rivers was ordering improvements in his
dainty damasquine armour, and the whole Fortress Palatine was animated
and alive with