"Nay, but I've had him itemized to me by the wife o' Humfrey Lemon. A blue eye, a hooked nose, a—"
"Well, well, wife," quoth I, "if a blue eye and a hooked nose be as bad signs in a man as they be in a horse, methinks this thy villain is a very round villain."
"And so he is," affirmed she.
"Yet," said I, "there is somewhere in me a something that doth pity him."
"By my troth!" cried my wife. "I do believe, Master Butter, that thou'dst pity the Devil's wife in childbirth."
"Ay, that I would!" I made answer, with a great calmness, for I saw that she sought to rouse my spleen.
"Well, do not bellow," blurted she, "for my mistress is as sound as a gold-piece."
Then quoth my lady, a-rising up on her elbow,
"Nay, that she is not. And, moreover, she would hear all the stories concerning this bad and bloody Lord of Denbeigh!"