and would have ravished her, had not his foster-brother, by a secret device, given him an inkling of the trap.  For this man, while pondering the fittest way to play privily the prompter’s part, and forestall the young man’s hazardous lewdness, found a straw on the ground and fastened it underneath the tail of a gadfly that was flying past; which he then drove towards the particular quarter where he knew Amleth to be:  an act which served the unwary prince exceedingly well.  The token was interpreted as shrewdly as it had been sent.  For Amleth saw the gadfly, espied with curiosity the straw which it wore embedded in its tail, and perceived that it was a secret warning to beware of treachery.  Alarmed, scenting a trap, and fain to possess his desire in greater safety, he caught up the woman in his arms and dragged her off to a distant and impenetrable fen.  Moreover, when they had lain together, he conjured her earnestly to disclose the matter to none, and the promise of silence was accorded as heartily as it was asked.  For both of them had been under the same fostering in their childhood; and this early rearing in common had brought Amleth and the girl into great intimacy.

So, when he had returned home, they all jeeringly asked him whether he had given way to love, and he avowed that he had ravished the maid.  When he was next asked where he did it, and what had been his pillow, he said that he had rested upon the hoof of a beast of burden, upon a cockscomb, and also upon a ceiling.  For, when he was starting into temptation, he had gathered fragments of all these things, in order to avoid lying.  And though his jest did not take aught of the truth out of the story, the answer was greeted with shouts of merriment from the bystanders.  The maiden, too, when questioned on the matter, declared that he had done no such thing; and her denial was the more readily credited when it was found that the escort had not witnessed the deed.  Then he who had marked the gadfly in order to give a hint, wishing to show Amleth that to his trick he owed his salvation, observed that latterly he had been singly devoted to Amleth.  The young man’s reply was apt.  Not to seem forgetful of his informant’s service, he said that he had seen a certain thing bearing a straw flit by suddenly, wearing a stalk of chaff fixed in its hinder parts.  The cleverness of this speech, which made the rest split with laughter, rejoiced the heart of Amleth’s friend.

Thus all were worsted, and none could open the secret lock of the young man’s wisdom.  But a friend of Feng, gifted more with assurance than judgment, declared that the unfathomable cunning of such a mind could not be detected by any vulgar plot, for the man’s obstinacy was so great that it ought not to be assailed with any mild measures; there were many sides to his wiliness, and it ought not to be entrapped by any one method.  Accordingly, said he, his own profounder acuteness had hit on a more delicate way, which was well fitted to be put in practice,