his sides with laughing. Ah! hollo, there, tymbesteres, ribaudes,
tramps, the devil's chickens,--down, down!"

The host was too late in his order. With a sudden spring, Graul, who
had long fixed her eye on the open lattice of the prisoners, had
wreathed herself round one of the pillars that supported the stairs,
swung lightly over the balustrade; and with a faint shriek the
startled Sibyll beheld the tymbestere's hard, fierce eyes, glaring
upon her through the lattice, as her long arm extended the timbrel for
largess. But no sooner had Sibyll raised her face than she was
recognized.

"Ho, the wizard and the wizard's daughter! Ho, the girl who glamours
lords, and wears sarcenet and lawn! Ho, the nigromancer who starves
the poor!"

At the sound of their leader's cry, up sprang, up climbed the hellish
sisters! One after the other, they darted through the lattice into
the chamber.

"The ronions! the foul fiend has distraught them!" groaned the
landlord, motionless with astonishment; but the more active Meg,
calling to the varlets and scullions, whom the tymbesteres had
collected in the yard, to follow her, bounded up the stairs, unlocked
the door, and arrived in time to throw herself between the captives
and the harpies, whom Sibyll's rich super-tunic and Adam's costly gown
had inflamed into all the rage of appropriation.

"What mean ye, wretches?" cried the bold Meg, purple with anger. "Do
ye come for this into honest folk's hostelries, to rob their guests in