departed, well pleased with her success, and inwardly full of mirth at the old rogue's simplicity.

And now came Mr. Brook to see Sir John and to learn how his venture of the day before had prospered. The knight was full of promises for the future, for he felt a crying need of some of Brook's gold; but he was in a mighty rage about what had happened him, and desired nothing so much as revenge upon Ford, whom he vowed he would undo that night, for he pledged himself to deliver Ford's wife into Mr. Brook's hand.

As the Windsor clock struck twelve through the thick foliage of the park, Sir John came stealthily under the trees to keep his appointment by Herne's oak. He was dressed like a hunter and had a great pair of buck's horns on his head, fastened in a close hood that covered his ears and met under his chin. He muttered encouraging words to himself as he stole forward, for he was sore afraid of the dark, in spite of his vain boasting and show of courage. As he neared the huge gnarled oak which was to be his trysting-place with Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page, the former came forth from her concealment in the trees and greeted him with well-feigned affection. He would have taken her in his huge arms, but that she retreated from his embrace and told him that Mrs. Page had come with her. "Divide me like a

bribe-buck; each take a haunch," said he.

I am a true spirit, welcome!"

Just then there came a strange noise abroad, and

the good wives pretended to be alarmed. "What should this be?" asked Falstaff, frightened in very truth.

"Away, away!" cried the dames in a breath, running off as they called; and, in an instant, Sir John was surrounded by a fairy throng, with Sir Hugh Evans as a satyr and Mrs. Quickly and Pistol as attendant sprites. They began to circle around him singing weird songs and twitching their tapers about on their swaying heads.

"They are fairies," quoth Sir John. "He that speaks to them shall die;" and he lay down upon his face in craven fear; they meanwhile chanting in time to their tip-toe steps and pinching him or burning him now and again with their tapers.

When they had sufficiently worked their will with him, there was a sound of a hunter's horn, at which all vanished away, and the sorry old gallant slowly rose, took off his horns, and got upon his feet. He looked around in terror, and well he might, for at the instant came running forth Page and Ford, with their wives, who seized him just in time to prevent him from taking to his ungainly heels. They made game of his foolish pretensions to gallantry, and it slowly dawned upon him that he had really been the dupe of the honest wives whom he had tried so hard to injure. Then said he, "I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass," which was a truth most aptly expressed; and he continued: "And these are not fairies? I was three or four times in the thought they were not,

and yet the guiltiness of my mind and the sudden surprise of my powers drove the grossness of the foppery into a received belief. See now, how wit may be made a Jack-a-lent, when 'tis upon ill employment," for he still believed in his wit, and was willing to blame its miscarriage upon any cause saving the right one of its dulness. He did not feel so much remorse for his sins as shame for his little wit, and, seeing this, Mrs. Page said these honest words: "Why, Sir John, do you think, though we would have thrust virtue out of our hearts by the head and shoulders, that ever any power could have made you our delight?"

་་

What, a hodge-pudding? a bag of flax?" said Ford, derisively; and Page, in his turn, called him "old, cold, and withered, and as poor as Job;" whereupon the crest-fallen knight acknowledged himself dejected, and gave himself up to them to work what punishment they would.

"Marry, sir, we'll bring you to Windsor, to one Master Brook, that you have cozened of money," said Ford, still smarting from the old knight's deceptions; but Page, with good-humoured forgetfulness of his evil designs, bid him come to his house and eat a posset, and thither all went the more merrily because suspicion and jealousy had been cured by good sport and fair humour.

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

WHE
Wand neither the besieged nor the besiegers

THEN the Trojan war was at its height,

seemed to gain advantage in the daily combats before the city, there lived in Troy a certain soothsayer and priest named Calchas, who had a daughter called Cressida. This maiden was, with but one exception, the fairest lady in Troy; but she was of a coy and self-willed nature, and, though her beauty had won her many lovers, yet she had never chosen any of them for her husband.

The sole rival in loveliness to Cressida in the besieged town was Queen Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of the Grecian city of Sparta. This beautiful queen had been stolen from her husband by Paris, a prince of Troy, and the theft had given rise to the war now raging between Troy and Greece, for all the brother kings of Menelaus had combined to aid him in his expedition against the prince who had thus wronged him.

Among the sons of King Priam of Troy was a prince named Troilus, who was deeply in love