THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY
a rat, and fond of fine girls: but he did not despair and still chiefly frequented the Uske, sometimes amusing himself by throwing sticks into the stream and watching them float away. And when the angelus sounded in the valley (though he sometimes waited till the sunset) he would get on his legs with a sigh and trudge home, and then lie down in his cockloft and fall asleep, muttering to himself "I don't much care if I never wake again in this horrible earth"—though, to be sure, he did not quite mean it. But you see the poor gentleman was in want of everything that makes life pleasant; and there are times when all of us, with cause and without, read King Solomon's Sermons with a sad relish. But Sir Payne would have done well to remember that this good King wrote a Song (and a Song of Songs) as well as a Sermon; and if one has a smack or two of the whip, why by the splendour of Love's firmament! there's a smack of a kiss and the unction (what sweeter, what more comfortable) distilled from a pair of darling lips, also. In our degenerate days, doubtless, it would be thought unwise of a man to spend his days by the riverside, waiting for a water-maid to woo him; but Sir Payne was no pagan and had great faith; and from my history you will understand that he was in the right and could have chosen no better way to mend his fortune. It was one day in June, between Midsummer and Petertide, a highday of Beelzebub (if he in truth have lordship over the flies), a day of swarming bees, of ripening cherries, of chiming foxglove, of still air moved now and again by
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