He would have none but the Doctor handle him; and, when his ineffable smalls were burning, he rose up in his royal shift, and ruthlessly commandeering every other pair in the room, stood, the speechless captain of as shameful and defenceless a crew of buccaneers as ever lowered its flag to honesty.
Then the Doctor resumed his rug.
“Sir,” said he, trembling, “I now fulfil my bond. My granddaughter is sheltering, with other modest ladies, in the pike-house hard by.”
But the King swore—by divine right—a pretty oath or two, while the chill of his understandings helped to sober him.
“By my cold wit you have won! and there may she remain for me. And now, decent man,” he cried, “I do call my company to witness how you have made yourself to be more honoured in the breach than the observance; and since you go wanting a frock, a bishop’s you shall have.”
And with that he snatched the rug, and, skipping under it, sat on the table, grinning over the quenching of his amazed fire-eaters.
And this, if you will believe deponent, is the true, if unauthorized, version of Dr. Winthrop’s election, and of the confounding of Godsport on a writ of quo warranto.
THE STRENGTH OF THE ROPE
Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit.
There were notices, of varying dates, posted in prominent places about the cliffs to warn the public not to go near them—unless, indeed, it were to read the notices themselves, which were printed in a very unobtrusive type. Of late, however, this Dogberrian caveat had been supplemented by a statement in the local gazette that the cliffs, owing to the recent rains succeeding prolonged frost, were in so ill a constitution that to approach them at all, even to decipher the warnings not to, was—well, to take your life out of the municipal into your own hands.