But as they hasted on, flitting soft-footed 'neath pallid moon, the jester of a sudden stopped, and turning, dragged Beltane into the shadows, for upon the silence came the sound of mailed feet pacing near.

Wherefore he went aside and thus, led by the music, beheld a jester in his motley lying a-sprawl beneath a tree.

A fashion of flesh, or rather pink-coloured hose for the ladies, luckily coming up at the juncture, when we were on our probation for the place of Chief Jester to S.'s Paper, established our reputation in that line.

And you did not even retain her, to the end that you might keep Caerellia fearlessly, whom you debauched when she was as much older than yourself as the maiden you married was younger, and to whom you write such letters as a jester at no loss for words would write if he were trying to get up an amour with a woman seventy years old.

Then Beltane, hasting back soft-treading, stood to peer through the leaves, and presently, his cock's-comb flaunting, his silver bells a-jingle, there stepped a mountebank into the clearingthat same jester with whom Beltane had talked aforetime.

Go Hermes, Hercules, and Mars, Fraught with these bills on Henry Hase, Drop with yon jester from the stars, And build a church in Langham-place.

The horses, therefore, being harnessed, under a flourish of music and a salute of guns, solemnly his imperial majesty ascended his new English throne, having the first lord of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester on his left.

And even yet I hope to cleave the jester through the brain, meet him when I may.

Thereafter, Beltane followed the jester down a narrow stair built in the thickness of the wall, and along a passage that ended abruptly, nor could Beltane see any sign of door in the solid masonry that barred their way.