Isabeau, and Guillemette, the landlord's daughter, who consorted
gaily enough with these brightly-plumaged birds of a rogue's
paradise. But the sixth woman was a bird of quite another feather.

Over all the clatter this woman's voice rose suddenly as clear as
the call of a thrush, and the hot space seemed to cool and the hot
air to clean as she sang. She who sang was a girl of five and
twenty, whom it had pleased to clothe her ripe womanhood in a boy's
habit, that clasped her fine body as close as a second skin, and she
might have passed for a man no otherwhere than in a madhouse. She
looked very charming in the stained and faded daintiness of her male
attire. She wore a green velvet doublet and green woollen hose, with
a scarlet girdle and pouch about her waist, and a scarlet feather
stuck defiantly in her green cap, beneath which her long fair hair
tumbled in liberal confusion about her shoulders. She sat on the
edge of a table swinging one shapely leg loose and strained upon its
fellow while she nursed her lute as if it had been a baby, and
carolled as if there were no other work in the world to do than to
sing. The men and women who sat and sprawled around the table kept
quiet, listening to her and staring at her; sleepy Colin pricked his
ears; Robin Turgis was alert to hear, for he knew that it was worth
while to listen when Huguette du Hamel chose to sing. Robin Turgis
knew all about her. Her gentle blood was wild blood, and in spite of
her birth and her name she had drifted on the stream of strange
pleasure to be the idol of the Fircone's shrine. Her voice was sweet
and the tune had a tender, appealing grace, with a little minor wail
in it that brought tears into the singer's eyes, and she mouthed the
words as if she found them sweet as honey. And this is what she
sang: