The Fleming frowned slightly and balanced the beam of his loom--he was about to begin the last panel--thoughtfully in his hand. "So it seems," he said. "Well, we will finish the tapestries as early as may be." One of the weavers saw lights in the Flemish loom-rooms that night, and reported that the strangers were working by candle-light, contrary to the law of the Guild--to which they did not belong. But Cornelys Bat was gathering together the work already done, and he and Cimarron and two of the other men carried it before morning to the warehouse of Gilbert Gay, the merchant, where it would be safe. They also took there certain bales of fine wool, dyes, and some household goods, and all this was loaded the next day on a boat and sent up the Thames to a point above London, where Robert Edrupt's pack-horses took it to King's Barton. "It is no use to try to fight the entire Guild," said Edrupt ruefully. "You had best come to our village and make your home there. When this has blown over you may come back to London." "If I were alone I would not budge," said the Fleming with a sternness in his blue eyes. "But there are the old folk and the little ones. We have left our own land and come where the wool was; it is now time for the work to come to us." "I will warrant you it will," said Master Gay. "But are you going to leave your looms for them to burn?" "Not quite," said Cornelys Bat, grimly. The mob came just after nightfall of the day after the women and children, with the rest of the household goods, had gone on their way to a new home. It was not a very well organized crowd, and was armed with clubs, pikes, and torches mainly. It found to its astonishment that the timbers of a loom, heavy and well seasoned, may make excellent weapons, and that the arm of a weaver is not feeble nor his spirit weak. It was no part of the plan of Cornelys Bat to leave the buildings of Master Gay undefended, and the determined, organized resistance of the Flemings repelled the attack. The next day it was found that the weavers had gone, and their quarters were occupied by some of Master Gay's men who were storing there a quantity of this year's fleeces. Meanwhile the Flemings had settled in the little road that ran past the nunnery at King's Barton and was called Minchen Lane. THE WISHING CARPET My rug lies under the candle-light, Flame-red, sea-blue, leaf-brown, gold-bright, Born of the shifting ancient sand Of a far-away desert land. There in Haroun al Raschid's day A carpet enchanted, their wise men say, Was woven for princes, in realms apart-- And so is this rug of my heart! Here is a leaf like the heart of a rose, And here the shift in the pattern shows How another weft in the tireless loom Set the gold of the skies a-bloom.