“Have a care!  Do thou nothing rashly.  Mind! an thou stealest my punt for the purpose, I send the constable after thee or e’er thou art half way over.”

William Shakspeare.

“He would make a stock-fish of me an he caught me.  It is hard sailing out of his straits, although they be carefully laid down in most parishes, and may have taken them from actual survey.”

Sir Silas.

“Sir, we have bestowed on him already well-nigh a good hour of our time.”

Sir Thomas, who was always fond of giving admonition and reproof to the ignorant and erring, and who had found the seeds (little mustard-seeds, ’t is true, and never likely to arise into the great mustard-tree of the Gospel) in the poor lad Willy, did let his heart soften a whit tenderer and kindlier than Master Silas did, and said unto Master Silas, —

“A good hour of our time!  Yea, Silas! and thou wouldst give him eternity!”

“What, sir! would you let him go?” said Master Silas.  “Presently we shall have neither deer nor dog, neither hare nor coney, neither swan nor heron; every carp from pool, every bream from brook, will be groped for.  The marble monuments in the church will no longer protect the leaden coffins; and if there be any ring of gold on the finger of knight or dame, it will be torn away with as little ruth and ceremony as the ring from a butchered sow’s snout.”

“Awful words!  Master Silas,” quoth the knight, musing; “but thou mistakest my intentions.  I let him not go; howbeit, at worst I would only mark him in the ear, and turn him up again after this warning, peradventure with a few stripes to boot athwart the shoulders, in order to make them shrug a little, and shake off the burden of idleness.”

Now I, having seen, I dare not say the innocence, but the innocent and simple manner of Willy, and pitying his tender years, and having an inkling that he was a lad, poor Willy! whom God had endowed with some parts, and into whose breast he had instilled that milk of loving-kindness by which alone we can be like unto those little children of whom is the household and kingdom of our Lord,—­I was moved, yea, even unto tears.  And now, to bring gentler thoughts into the hearts of Master Silas and Sir Thomas, who, in his wisdom, deemed it a light punishment to slit an ear or two, or inflict a wiry scourging, I did remind his worship that another paper was yet unread, at least to them, although I had been perusing it.

This was much pleasanter than the two former, and overflowing with the praises of the worthy knight and his gracious lady; and having an echo to it in another voice, I did hope thereby to disarm their just wrath and indignation.  It was thus couched:-

“First shepherd.

“Jesu! what lofty elms are here! 
Let me look through them at the clear,
Deep sky above, and bless my star
That such a worthy knight’s they are!