we students were stoning each other in North Street.

"Yet he does play a very good sword, and is cunning of fence, for your
comfort," said Randal. So I hummed the old lilt of the Leslies, whence,
they say, comes our name--

Between the less lea and the mair,
He slew the knight and left him there;--

for I deemed it well to show a good face. Moreover, I had some conceit
of myself as a swordsman, and Randal was laughing like a foolbody at my
countenance.

"Faith, you will make a spoon or spoil a horn, and--let me have my laugh
out--you bid well for an archer," said Randal; and Robin counselling me
to play the same prank on the French lad's sword as late I had done on
his own, they took each of them an arm of mine, and so we swaggered down
the steep ways into Chinon.

First I would go to the tailor and the cordwainer, and be fitted for my
new splendours as an archer of the guard.

They both laughed at me again, for, said they very cheerfully, "You may
never live to wear these fine feathers."

But Randal making the reflection that, if I fell, there would be none to
pay the shopmaster, they both shouted with delight in the street, so that
passers-by turned and marvelled at them. Clearly I saw that to go to
fight a duel is one thing, and to go and look on is another, and much
more gay, for my heart had no desire of all this merriment. Rather would