Besides, there is a rib of this very cow exhibited at Bristol. To be sure it is not a rib now of a cow, but out of reverence to the antiquity of the assertion which allegedly makes it so, I think we are bound to believe what is thus advanced. Not that I do myself, but that is of no consequence. I have a strong idea that the cow was not a cow, but a countess (not a Countess Cowper), who made war in her own right, lived a disreputable life, was as destructive to wealthy young lords as a _Lorette_, and won whole estates by cheating at _écarté_. Guy took a hand, and beat her. Poor Master Guy, he was as hardly used as ever Jacob was, and much he meditated thereupon in the fields at eventide. The stern earl would by no means give his consent to the marriage of his daughter with the young champion, until the latter had performed some doughtier deeds than this. The boy (he was still in his teens) took heart of grace, divided a crooked sixpence with Phillis, and straightway sailed for Normandy, where he arrived, after meeting as many thieves by the way as if he had walked about for a month in the streets of Dover. But Master Guy killed all _he_ met; there is a foolish judicial, not to say social, prejudice against our doing the same with the bandits of Dover. I can not conjecture why; perhaps they have a privilege under some of the city companies, whereby they are constituted the legal skinners of all sojourners among them, carrying filthy lucre. Guy met in Normandy with the last person he could have expected to fall in with--no other than the Emperor of Almayne, a marvellously ubiquitous person to be met with in legends, and frequently encountered in the seaports of inland towns. The historians are here a little at issue. One says that Master Guy having found a certain Dorinda tied to the stake, and awaiting a champion who would stake his own life for her rescue, inquired the “antecedents” of the position. Dorinda, it appears, had been as rudely used as young lady possibly could be, “by the Duke of Blois, his son,” and the duke was so enraged at Dorinda’s charge against his favorite Otto, that he condemned her to be burned alive, unless a champion appeared in time to rescue her by defeating the aforesaid Otto in single combat. Guy, of course, transacted the little business successfully; spoiled Otto’s beauty by slashing his nose; and so enchanted Dorinda, that she never accused her champion of doing aught displeasing to her.