“Art thou again at thy freaks?” said the Thane, angrily:  “thou hast soon forgotten the stocks and the whipping-post on Easter-day.  It were well that Nicholas should refresh thy memory in this matter.”

At this dreaded name the poor wretch fell on his face.

“Please ye, my lord,” said he, hardly raising his head from the floor, “I am here but for a witness beliken.  I am breeding of no broil, save an’ my gossip o’ yesternight drew me into a tussle with old Split-Feet and his company.”

He groaned, but not without considerable effort, and his face puckered in a heap at the recollection.

“What!—­the foul fiend helped thee to thy liquor, I trow?” said Gamel, hastily.  “Think not to foist thy fooleries upon me.  Should I find thee with a lie on thy tongue, the hide were as well off thy shoulders.  To thy speech—­quick, what sawest thou?”

“I will give it all, withouten a word but what the blessed saints would avouch,” said the terrified supplicant, whose once fiery face was now blanched, or rather dyed of a dull and various blue.

“I was wending home from Merland, where I had been helping Dan the smith to his luckpenny, when as I took the path-road down yonder unlucky hill to the ford, not thinking of the de’il’s workmen that had flown off with the church the night before, I was whistling, or, it mayhap, singing,—­or—­or—­I am not just particular to know how it was, for the matter of it; but at any rate I was getting up, having tumbled down the steep almost nigh to the bottom, and I thought my eyes had strucken fire, for I saw lights frisking and frolicking up and down the hill.  Then I sat down to watch, and, sure enough, such a puck-fisted rabble, without cloak or hosen, I never beheld—­all hurry-scurry up the hill, and some of the like were on the gallop down again.  They were shouting, and mocking, and laughing, like so many stark-mad fools at a May-feast.  They strid twenty paces at a jump, with burdens that two of the best oxen about the manor had not shifted the length of my thumbnail.  ’Tis some unlucky dream, said I, rubbing the corners of my eyes, and trying to pinch myself awake.  Just then I saw a crowd of the busiest of ’em running up from the river, and making directly towards the steep bank below where I sat.  They were hurrying a great log of timber, which they threw down close beside me, as if to rest ere they mounted.  ’My friends,’—­what should ail me to talk to ’em I cannot tell,—­’My friends, but ye seem to have more work in your hands than wit in your noddles—­ye might have spared yourselves the labour, I trow.’  With that the whole rout turned upon me with a shout and a chattering that would have dumbfounded the shrillest tongue in the whole hundred—­the mill-wheel was nothing to it.  I would have escaped, but my feet were holden like as they had been i’ the stocks.  One, the foremost of the crew—­I do think he had a long tail and gaping hoofs, but I was over frightened to see very clear—­came with a mocking malicious grin, his tongue lolling out, and his eyes glaring and fiend-like.