"Ah!" he said; "if the King had had such politicians about him as I am, he had been better served. Hear now how you have come by your dinner. My good housekeeper, Dorothy Leggats, serves me up this capon, one of a couple that a neighbour brought me yesterday. Now an I had told her that I needed it for you, first there would have been loud complainings, for the good woman believes in her heart that I starve myself; then she would have gone 'clack, clack' over the whole village, for the good woman can no more keep a secret than a sieve can hold water. So, says I, rubbing my hands; 'That is a goodly sight for a hungry man, Dorothy, but I have business on hand, affairs of State, you understand, and I must not be disturbed for three hours at the least. So if anyone come you must say that the parson has shut himself in his chamber, and cannot be spoken with.' So I lock the door on her, and slip out of the window, which, by good fortune, is near the road, and here I am." "We thank you much, sir;" I said, "but where shall you get your own dinner?" "Nay," answered the good man, "let me care for that. 'Tis little that I can do for his Majesty, and I should be a bad subject if I should think of myself when there are two stout soldiers in need, that can strike a blow for him, which my cloth forbids me to do. I shall make my Friday fast to-day, and give myself indulgence for flesh and fowl, if such fall in my way, when Friday itself shall come." "Ah! Master Parson," said John, "I reckon that you fast on other days than Friday. But come, take a morsel with us; for there is more than enough for us two." We had some trouble to persuade him; but at the last he consented to share with us; and a right jovial meal we had, though we had nothing stronger to drink than a pitcher of water that John had drawn from the well in the farmyard the night before. The good parson stayed talking with us till, as he said, his time was out. He had been at Oxford, at St. John's College, about forty years before, when the Archbishop of Canterbury whom the Parliament so barbarously put to death, was his tutor. Of him he had many things to say, of which I will here set down one. "They did him an ill turn that brought him to Court, and put him in the way of preferment and of office in the State. It had been well for him as for the realm also if he had had no higher place than to be president of his college. Learning never had a more duteous son nor the King a worse counsellor."