"Take heed, Sir Thomas," said Sir Francis Weston, the knight who held
the staff on the other side," or we shall have the canopy down. Let Sir
Thomas Arundel relieve you."

"No," rejoined Wyat, recovering himself; "I will not rest till we come to
the bridge."

"You are in no haste to possess the kerchief," said Anne petulantly.

"There you wrong me, madam! "cried Sir Thomas eagerly.

"What ho, good fellows!" he shouted to the attendants at the palfreys'
heads, "your lady desires you to stop."

And I desire them to go on--I, Will Sommers, jester to the high and
mighty King Harry the Eighth!" cried a voice of mock authority behind
the knight. "What if Sir Thomas Wyat has undertaken to carry the
canopy farther than any of his companions, is that a reason he should
be relieved? Of a surety not--go on, I say!"

The person who thus spoke then stepped forward, and threw a glance
so full of significance at Anne Boleyn that she did not care to dispute
the order, but, on the contrary, laughingly acquiesced in it.

Will Sommers--the king's jester, as he described himself--was a small
middle-aged personage, with a physiognomy in which good nature and
malice, folly and shrewdness, were so oddly blended, that it was
difficult to say which predominated. His look was cunning and
sarcastic, but it was tempered by great drollery and oddity of manner,
and he laughed so heartily at his own jests and jibes, that it was