few, and well she guessed whither I was bound.  Therefore she sent for me, and bidding me carry her love to Elliot, she put into my hands a gift to her friend.  It was a ring of silver-gilt, fashioned like that which her own father and mother had given her.  At this ring she had a custom of looking often, so that the English conceived it to be an unholy talisman, though it bore the Name that is above all names.  That ring I now wear in my bosom.  So, saying farewell, with many kind words on her part, I rode towards Tours, where Elliot and her father as then dwelt, in that same house where I had been with them to be healed of my malady, after the leaguer of Orleans.  To Tours I rode, telling them not of my coming, and carrying the jackanapes well wrapped up in furs of the best.  The weather was frosty, and folk were sliding on the ice of the flooded fields near Tours when I came within sight of the great Minster.  The roads rang hard; on the smooth ice the low sun was making paths of gold, and I sang as I rode.  Putting up my horse at the sign of the “Hanging Sword,” I took the ape under my great furred surcoat, and stole like a thief through the alleys, towards my master’s house.  The night was falling, and all the casement of the great chamber was glowing with the colour and light of a leaping fire within.  There came a sound of music too, as one touched the virginals to a tune of my own country.  My heart was beating for joy, as it had beaten in the bushment outside Paris town.

I opened the outer door secretly, for I knew the trick of it, and I saw from the thin thread of light on the wall of the passage that the chamber door was a little ajar.  The jackanapes was now fretting and struggling within my surcoat, so, opening the coat, I put him down by the chamber door.  He gave a little scratch, as was his custom, for he was a very mannerly little beast, and the sound of the virginals ceased.  Then, pushing the door with his little hands, he ran in, with a kind of cry of joy.

“In Our Lady’s name, what is this?” came the voice of Elliot.  “My dear, dear little friend, what make you here?”

Then I could withhold myself no longer, but entered, and my lady ran to me, the jackanapes clinging about her neck with his arms.  But mine were round her too, and what words we said, and what cheer we made each the other, I may not write, commending me to all true lovers, whose hearts shall tell them that whereof I am silent.  Much was I rebuked for that I did not write to warn them of my coming, which was yet the more joyful that they were not warned.  And then the good woman, Elliot’s kinswoman, must be called (though in sooth not at the very first), and then a great fire must be lit in my old chamber; and next my master came in, from a tavern where he had been devising with some Scots of his friends; and all the while the jackanapes kept such a merry coil, and played so many of his tricks, and got so many kisses from his mistress, that it was marvel.  But of all that had befallen me in the wars, and of how the Maiden did (concerning which Elliot had questioned me first of all), I would tell them little till supper was brought.