HOW A KNIGHT OF USKE KEPT GUARD OVER A TREE
IT APPEARS to me, gentlemen, that since we are going this day to Uske with the deliberate intent and fixed resolve of taking our pleasure there, it would be well for me to devise a tale concerning that town aforesaid, and so I will bring a text for you out of its byways and make an ancient moral story. You shall understand then that a good many years ago (how many I will not say, lest the Rubrican catch me tripping in my antiquities) there was a young gentleman living in Uske, called the Sieur Payne Martell, whose coat was so splendid and princely a one that he could never have it blazoned on his vestments in full, because the bill would have been too long for anything, or for his purse at all events. When I say never I speak not by the book, for I mean to say in his young days with which my tale is concerned; but when he was about fifty years old he went as brave as any one; and for this you may look in the tournament-rolls of Windsor and in the Inquistio Post Mortem held some years afterwards. This young knight then lived at Uske in a very pleasant and retired manner, subsisting on the contents of a small chest he had; the said chest containing a beggarly number of gold pieces; how gained I will not dare
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