“May be,” said Buckingham, “your Majesty’s favour is not so winsome as a lady’s cheek.  I would wager my cap, Jack Finett hath found a smoother tongue, but a harder service, than your Majesty’s.”

“O’ my saul,—­if I thought so,” said the monarch, as he threw down a spoonful of buttered pease, “I would send him to the Tower, and he should write a book on Hercules his distaff.”

“Or Omphale’s spindle,” said a voice at the lower end of the hall, which, issuing from a mask, closely fitted, sounded wondrously hollow and portentous.  A profound silence ensued—­all eyes being turned towards the speaker, who was no less a personage than the first household god, attired in his proper suit.  He approached the king’s table, waving his hand in token of attention—­

    “The knight ye speak of, mark me well,
    I’ve just drawn from the castle-well!”

“Mercy on us,” cried Sir Richard Hoghton.  “The draw-well is more than eighty yards deep.  Thou art a lying deity, and shalt be banished from this bright Olympus.”

But the deity, nothing abashed, thus continued—­

    “How came he thus, I dare not tell;
    My brother may the mystery dispel.”

He stooped down—­rising again to the astonished eyes of the fair dames and nobles at the upper bench, in the forester’s habit of Kendal green, with cloak and doublet of the same colour.

“What’s now?” said James.  “Witchery and fause negromancie, o’ my troth.  ’Tis treason, Sir Richard, to use glamour in the king’s presence.”

But the sylvan god continued in the doggerel of his predecessor—­

    “Sir John to be forgiven would hope;
    He had been drowned, but for the rope!”

“Ay,” said the king, chuckling at this opportunity, purposely given, for a display of his wit—­“he’ll be hanged—­na doot, na doot.”

“Prythee, Sylvanus, or whatever thou be, bring Sir John hither, that he may dry his web in the hot sunshine of a lady’s glance,” said Villiers, with an ill-suppressed sneer.

Again this Proteus was transformed.  Doffing his habit, Sir John Finett stood confessed before them.  He knelt penitently before the king, humbly assuring his Majesty that he had been preparing this device, and many others, to please and surprise him; but that, through the bungling of some, and the bashfulness of others, he was obliged to enact the parts himself.  This excuse the king was graciously pleased to accept, commending him for his great diligence and zeal.

The night now wore on with much outward show of mirth and revelry; but the king went early to rest, purposing to rise betimes.

On the following day he went out again with a great company, and killed a brace of stags, which mighty achievement, by authentic record, we find was accomplished before dinner—­the king alone being able to bring down the venison.

We willingly pass over this day’s banquet; nor do we care to chronicle the feats of Morris the head-cook, and his deputies of the ranges and the pastries.  The boiling and roasting of poults and pullets, and the construction of comfits and confections, we consign to everlasting oblivion.