His next object of attention was the purse; and after various _pros_ and _cons_, Inclination, the best logician in the world, reasoned him into taking it. "For," said Philip, "dirty fingers soil no gold;" and having carefully put it into his pouch, the Woodman laid his finger upon the side of his nose, and plunged headlong into a deep meditation concerning the best and least suspicious method of informing the young Count de Blenau of all he had seen, heard, or suspected. We will not follow the course of this cogitation, which, as it doubtless took place in the French tongue, must necessarily suffer by translation, but taking a short cut straight through all the zig-zags of Philip's mind, arrive directly at the conclusion, or rather at the consequences, which were these. In the first place, he commanded his son Charles to load the mule with wood, notwithstanding the boy's observation, that no one would buy wood at that time of the morning, or rather the night; for, to make use of Shakspeare's language, the Morn, far from being yet clad in any russet mantle, was snugly wrapped up in the blanket of the dark, and snoring away, fast asleep, like her betters. Precisely in the same situation as Aurora, that is to say, soundly sleeping, till her ordinary hour of rising, was Joan, the Woodman's wife. Philip, however, by sundry efforts, contrived to awaken her to a sense of external things; and perceiving that, after various yawns and stretches, her mind had arrived at the point of comprehending a simple proposition, "Get up, Joan, get up!" cried he. "I want you to write a letter for me; writing being a gift that, by the blessing of God, I do not possess." The wife readily obeyed; for Philip, though as kind as the air of spring, had a high notion of marital privileges, and did not often suffer his commands to be disputed within his little sphere of dominion. However, it seemed a sort of tenure by which his sway was held, that Joan, his wife, should share in all his secrets; and accordingly, in the present instance, the good Woodman related in somewhat prolix style, not only all that had passed between Chavigni and Lafemas in the house, but much of what they had said before they even knocked at his door. "For you must know, Joan," said he, "that I could not sleep for thinking of all this day's bad work; and, as I lay awake, I heard horses stop at the water, and people speaking, and very soon what they said made me wish to hear more, which I did, as I have told you. And now, Joan, I think it right, as a Christian and a man, to let this young cavalier know what they are plotting against him. So sit thee down; here is a pen and ink, and a plain sheet out of the boy's holy catechism,--God forgive me! But it could not go to a better use."