After a hot chase, Geoffrey succeeded in catching the fat hen and handing her over to the white-capped cook of the inn kitchen, and then he once more sat down and took up his parchment; for though a serving boy through the week, on Sunday he took his place with the little choristers of the Dives cathedral, and Father Anselm had allowed him to take the score home with him, so that he might practise in his leisure moments. But as he now tried to go over the black notes, there was a mournful cadence to every tone, for Geoffrey was very unhappy. Usually he was gay as a bird, and indeed sang very like one; but to-day he had a weight on his mind, as he sat there in the courtyard of the quaint old inn. It was long, long ago that Geoffrey lived—nearly six hundred years. The inn in which he served had been built in the Norman town of Dives nearly three centuries earlier by the great Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror, whose name, which in French (for Normandy is a part of France) is Guillaume-le-Conquérant, the inn still bore in Geoffrey’s time as it bears to this day. The Duke William had built the house because he wished to have some safe and pleasant stopping place during the time he was overseeing the finishing and freighting of the fleet of boats which lay near by in the river Dives, and in which he meant to sail to the conquest of England. And so, with such illustrious beginning, the inn had become very famous among the nobles of Normandy, and grown larger and larger, till, in the days when Geoffrey lived, it was a very beautiful place indeed. The courtyard, which one entered through an arched gateway covered with guelder roses, was surrounded by ancient wooden buildings; their dark mossy beams were put together with white plaster, and their innumerable picturesque peaks and gables and wooden galleries and winding stairways were richly overhung with masses of the most lovely vines; for roses, wistarias, clematis, and jasmines clambered everywhere. There were two gardens also; one for the kitchen, the other full of lilies and clove pinks and French daisies, and numberless sweet old-fashioned flowers; for Monsieur Jean, the innkeeper, had much taste and loved both flowers and birds. Indeed, besides several cockatoos, he always kept dozens of peacocks that trailed about the courtyard squawking and spreading their gorgeous tails every time a new guest entered the gateway. There were fine pigeons, too, and rabbits and chickens, and no end of interesting things.