and the bronzes about the stately tomb he'd lie in, and d'ye see? the unreason of it all the mad high humour of it all took hold on me till I sat me down on a dark stair-head in a passage, and laughed till I could laugh no more. What else could I have done?

'I never heard his feet behind me he always walked like a cat but his arm slid round my neck, pulling me back where I sat, till my head lay on his chest, and his left hand held the knife plumb over my heart Benedetto! Even so I laughed the fit was beyond my holding - laughed while he ground his teeth in my ear. He was stark crazed for the time.

""Laugh," he said. “Finish the laughter. I'll not cut ye short. Tell me now" - he wrenched at my head "why the King chose to honour you — you you - you lickspittle Englishman? I am full of patience now. I have waited so long." Then he was off at score about his Jonah in Bury Refectory, and what I'd said of it, and his pictures in the chapel which all men praised and none looked at twice (as if that was my fault!) and a whole parcel of words and looks treasured up against me through years.

""Ease off your arm a little,” I said. "I cannot die by choking, for I am just dubbed knight, Benedetto.” ""Tell me, and I'll confess ye, Sir Harry Dawe, knight. There's a long night before ye. Tell," says he.

'So I told him

his chin on my crown told him all. Told it as well and with as many words as I have

ever told a tale at a supper with Torrigiano. I knew Benedetto would understand, for, mad or sad, he was a craftsman. I believed it to be the last tale I'd ever tell top of mortal earth, and I would not put out bad work before I left the lodge. All art's one art, as I said. I bore Benedetto no malice. My spirits, d'you see, were catched up in a high, solemn exaltation, and I saw all earth's vanities foreshortened and little, laid out below me like a town from a cathedral scaffolding. I told him what befell, and what I thought of it. I gave him the King's very voice at "Master Dawe, you've saved me thirty pounds!" his peevish grunt while he looked for the sword; and how the badgereyed figures of Glory and Victory leered at from the Flemish hangings. Body o' me, 'twas a fine, noble tale, and, as I thought, my last work on earth!

me

""That is how I was honoured by the King," I said. "They'll hang ye for killing me, Benedetto. And, şince you've killed in the King's Palace, they'll draw and quarter you; but you're too mad to care. Grant me, though, ye never heard a better tale."

'He said nothing, but I felt him shake. My head on his chest shook; his right arm fell away, his left dropped the knife, and he leaned with both hands on my shoulder — shaking shaking! I turned me round. No need to put my foot on his knife. The man was speechless with laughter honest craftsman's mirth. The first time I'd ever seen him laugh. You know the mirth that cuts off the very breath,

while ye stamp and snatch at the short ribs? That was Benedetto's case.

'When he began to roar and bay and whoop in the passage, I haled him out into the street, and there we leaned against the wall and had it all over again waving our hands and wagging our heads watch came to know if we were drunk.

till the

I

'Benedetto says to 'em, solemn as an owl: "You have saved me thirty pounds, Mus' Dawe," and off he pealed. In some sort we were mad drunk because dear life had been given back to me, and he because, as he said afterwards, because the old crust of hatred round his heart was broke up and carried away by laughter. His very face had changed too. ""Hal," he cries, "I forgive thee. Forgive me too, Hal. Oh, you English, you English! Did it gall thee, Hal, to see the rust on the dirty sword? Hal, how the King grunted with joy. the Master."

Tell me again,
Oh, let us tell

'So we reeled back to the chapel, arms round each other's necks, and when we could speak - he thought we'd been fighting - we told the Master. Yes, we told Torrigiano, and he laughed till he rolled on the new cold pavement. Then he knocked our heads together. ""Ah, you English," he cried. "You are more than pigs. You are English. Now you are well punished for your dirty fishes. Put the draft in the fire, and never do so any more.

You are a fool, Hal, and you

are a fool, Benedetto, but I need your works to please this beautiful English King

"" And I meant to kill Hal," says Benedetto. "Mas

ter, I meant to kill him because the English King had made him a knight."

""Ah!" says the Master, shaking his finger. "Benedetto, if you had killed my Hal, I should have killed you in the cloister. But you are a craftsman, too, so I should have killed you like a craftsman, very, very slowly in an hour, if I could spare the time!" That was Torrigiano the Master!'

Mr. Springett sat quite still for some time after Hal had finished. Then he turned dark red: then he rocked to and fro; then he coughed and wheezed till the tears ran down his face. Dan knew by this that he was laughing, but it surprised Hal at first.

'Excuse me, sir,' said Mr. Springett, 'but I was thinkin' of some stables I built for a gentleman in Eighteen hundred Seventy-four. They was stables in blue brick very particular work. Dunno as they weren't the best job which ever I'd done. But the gentleman's lady she'd come from Lunnon, new she was all for buildin' what she called a - what you an' me 'ud call a dik - right acrost his park. A middlin' big job which I'd have had the contract of, for she spoke to me in the library about it. But I told her there was a line o' springs just where she wanted to dig her ditch, an' she'd flood the park if she went on.'

married haw-haw

'Were there any springs at all?' said Hal.

'Bound to be springs everywhere if you dig deep enough, ain't there? But what I said about the springs

put her out o' conceit o' diggin' haw-haws, an' she took an' built a white tile dairy instead. But when I sent in my last bill for the stables, the gentleman he paid it 'thout even lookin' at it, and I hadn't forgotten nothin', I do assure you. More than that, he slips two fivepound notes into my hand in the library, an' "Ralph,” he says he allers called me by name "Ralph,” he says, "you've saved me a heap of expense an' trouble this autumn." I didn't say nothin', o' course. I knowed he didn't want any haw-haws digged acrost his park no more'n I did, but I never said nothing. No more he didn't say nothing about my blue-brick stables, which was really the best an' honestest piece o' work I'd done in quite a while. He give me ten pounds for savin' him a hem of a deal o' trouble at home. I reckon things are pretty much alike, all times, in all places.'

Hal and he laughed together. Dan couldn't quite understand what they thought so funny, and went on with his work for some time without speaking.

When he looked up Mr. Springett, alone, was wiping his eyes with his green and yellow pockethandkerchief.

'Bless me, Mus' Dan, I've been asleep,' he said. 'An' I've dreamed a dream which has made me laugh - laugh as I ain't laughed in a long day. I can't remember what 'twas all about, but they do say that when old men take to laughin' in their sleep, they're middlin' ripe for the next world. Have you been workin' honest, Mus' Dan?'