Here she turned her face from me, half in mock anger.  But, just as it is with children, so it was with Elliot, for indeed my dear was ever much of a child, wherefore her memory is now to me so tender.  And as children make pretence to be in this humour or that for sport, and will affect to be frighted till they really fear and weep, so Elliot scarce knew how deep her own humour went, and whether she was acting like a player in a Mystery, or was in good earnest.  And if she knew not rightly what her humour was, far less could I know, so that she was ever a puzzle to me, and kept me in a hundred pretty doubts and dreads every day.  Alas! how sorely, through all these years, have I longed to hear her rebuke me in mirth, and put me adread, and laugh at me again I for she was, as it were, wife and child to me, at once, and I a child with her, and as happy as a child.

Thus, nothing would now jump with her humour but to be speaking of her jackanapes, and how he would come louting and leaping to welcome her, and forsake her old kinswoman, who had followed with them to Tours.  And she had much to report concerning his new tricks:  how he would leap over a rod for the Dauphin or the Maid, but not if adjured in the name of the English King, or the Duke of Burgundy.  Also, if you held him, he would make pretence to bite any that you called Englishman or false Frenchman.  Moreover, he had now been taught to fetch and carry, and would climb into Elliot’s window, from the garden, and bring her little basket of silks, or whatsoever she desired, or carry it thither, as he was commanded.

“And he wrung the cat’s neck,” quoth my master; but Elliot bade him hold his peace.

In such sport the hours passed, till we were safely come to Tours, and so to their house in a street running off the great place, where the cathedral stands.  It was a goodly dwelling, with fair carved-work on the beams, and in the doorway stood the old Scots kinswoman, smiling wide and toothless, to welcome us.  Elliot kissed her quickly, and she fondled Elliot, and held a hand out over her shoulder to greet me.

“But where is my jackanapes, that should have been here to salute his mistress?” Elliot cried.

“Out and alas!” said the old wife in our country tongue—­“out and alas! for I have ill news.  The poor beast is missing these three days past, and we fear he is stolen away by some gangrel bodies, for the town is full of them.  There came two to our door, three days agone, and one was a blind man, and the other a one-armed soldier, maimed in the wars, and I gave them bite and sup, as a Christian should do.  Now, they had not been gone but a few minutes, and I was in the spence, putting away the dishes, when I heard a whistle in the street, and anon another.  I thought little of it, and so was about my business for an hour, when I missed the jackanapes.  And then there was a hue and cry, and all the house was searched, and the neighbours