There hangs yet (and long may it so hang!) in our great hall at Drayton a sword--not in its sheath, but naked, and broken some two parts of its length from the hilt, but shining bright as on the day it was first drawn by the great prince that once used it. Beneath it, also against the wall above the hearth, is the scabbard. It was on a fine morning of the fall of last year, as I was tending Ned's new Dutch garden, that I heard loud and childish altercation proceeding through the open windows of the great hall above me. And there in a window arose the fair gilded head of my seven-year Mary, my first and best gift to Ned, and his best to me. "Pray, madam, come up to the hall," she cried, "for Will is ever doing things of naught, and he will not be gainsaid by me." "Nay, child," I replied, loath to lose the sweet air of the morning and my labor below. "Nay, child, but you must take means and learn cunning to control him." "I cannot do so, madam," says poor Mary, well-nigh in tears; "and he is even now about dismounting the broken sword from the wall. But if you will come, madam, I will hold his legs while I may." And with that I ascended in great haste, yet but just in time to save the relic from desecration and the heir of Royston and Drayton a backward fall of great peril. For the noise of my entrance caused his most unserene Highness to turn quick on his heel and to miss in part the footing, already precarious, that he had attained upon the mantel. In short, he fell into my arms and into tears with one and the same movement; tears shed for no danger run--such is not his habit--but of grief for the plaything that was but now within his grasp; for, though but rising five, Master William Maurice Royston would have the broken sword to fight battles with--against King Lewis, forsooth, and the wicked Frenchmen, in the garden. "It is but a bwoken old sing, madam-muvver," he cried between his sobs, "and of a fit length for me, lacking the pointed end, which I did purpose leaving upon the wall." And so I must needs tell him how dearly I do prize that shattered weapon, thinking the while of the shame that was averted, in part by its means, from our houses--and of the honor, too, that came thereby.