of any service to himself or to others. Now, look ye here!
This wi' the wheels were called the water-engine, and it was his crazy
thought that, by heating the water in that ere kettle, ye might make the
wheels go round, and thereby travel along iron bars quicker nor a
horse could run. 'Oons! I'd match my old brown mare against all such
contrivances to the end o' time. But to our places, for the Duke is
coming.'

We had scarce taken our seats with the other suitors, when the
folding-doors were flung open, and a stout, thick, short man of fifty,
or thereabouts, came bustling into the room, and strode down it between
two lines of bowing clients. He had large projecting blue eyes, with
great pouches of skin beneath them, and a yellow, sallow visage. At his
heels walked a dozen officers and men of rank, with flowing wigs and
clanking swords. They had hardly passed through the opposite door into
the Duke's own room, when the gentleman with the list called out a name,
and the guests began one after the other to file into the great man's
presence.

'Methinks his Grace is in no very gentle temper,' quoth Farmer Brown.
'Did you not mark how he gnawed his nether lip as he passed?'

'He seemed a quiet gentleman enough,' I answered. 'It would try Job
himself to see all these folk of an afternoon.'

'Hark at that!' he whispered, raising his finger. As he spoke the
sound of the Duke's voice in a storm of wrath was heard from the inner
chamber, and a little sharp-faced man came out and flew through the
ante-chamber as though fright had turned his head.

'He is an armourer of Bristol,' whispered one of my neighbours. 'It is
likely that the Duke cannot come to terms with him over a contract.'

'Nay,' said another. 'He supplied Sir Marmaduke Hyson's troop with
sabres, and it is said that the blades will bend as though they were
lead. Once used they can never be fitted back into the scabbard again.'

'The tall man who goes in now is an inventor,' quoth the first. 'He hath
the secret of some very grievous fire, such as hath been used by the
Greeks against the Turks in the Levant, which he desires to sell for the
better fortifying of Bristol.'

The Greek fire seemed to be in no great request with the Duke, for the
inventor came out presently with his face as red as though it had been
touched by his own compound. The next upon the list was my honest friend
the farmer. The angry tones which greeted him promised badly for the
fate of t