as they go to execution, not seldom are allowed wine to drink, so they but ask it.  Lo now, I see that thou art inexorable in thy ruthlessness, and on no wise to be moved by my suffering:  wherefore with resignation I will compose me to await death, that God may have mercy on my soul.  And may this that thou doest escape not the searching glance of His just eyes.”  Which said, she dragged herself, sore suffering, toward the middle of the floor, despairing of ever escaping from her fiery torment, besides which, not once only, but a thousand times she thought to choke for thirst, and ever she wept bitterly and bewailed her evil fate.  But at length the day wore to vespers, and the scholar, being sated with his revenge, caused his servant to take her clothes and wrap them in his cloak, and hied him with the servant to the hapless lady’s house, where, finding her maid sitting disconsolate and woebegone and resourceless at the door:—­“Good woman,” quoth he, “what has befallen thy mistress?” Whereto:—­“Sir, I know not,” replied the maid.  “I looked to find her this morning abed, for methought she went to bed last night, but neither there nor anywhere else could I find her, nor know I what is become of her; wherefore exceeding great is my distress; but have you, Sir, nought to say of the matter?” “Only this,” returned the scholar, “that I would I had had thee with her there where I have had her, that I might have requited thee of thy offence, even as I have requited her of hers.  But be assured that thou shalt not escape my hands, until thou hast from me such wage of thy labour that thou shalt never flout man more, but thou shalt mind thee of me.”  Then, turning to his servant, he said:—­“Give her these clothes, and tell her that she may go bring her mistress away, if she will.”  The servant did his bidding; and the maid, what with the message and her recognition of the clothes, was mightily afraid, lest they had slain the lady, and scarce suppressing a shriek, took the clothes, and, bursting into tears, set off, as soon as the scholar was gone, at a run for the tower.

Now one of the lady’s husbandmen had had the misfortune to lose two of his hogs that day, and, seeking them, came to the tower not long after the scholar had gone thence, and peering about in all quarters, if haply he might have sight of his hogs, heard the woeful lamentation that the hapless lady made, and got him up into the tower, and called out as loud as he might:—­“Who wails up there?” The lady recognized her husbandman’s voice, and called him by name, saying:—­“Prithee, go fetch my maid, and cause her come up hither to me.”  The husbandman, knowing her by her voice, replied:—­“Alas!  Madam, who set you there?  Your maid has been seeking you all day long:  but who would ever have supposed that you were there?” Whereupon he took the props of the ladder, and set them in position, and proceeded to secure the rounds to them with withies.  Thus engaged he was found by the maid, who, as she