So spake he; then, uprising from his knees, Strode blithe away and vanished 'mid the trees. Whereat Sir Pertinax shook doleful head: "There go our good gold pieces, lord!" he said. "Would that yon rogue swung high upon a tree, And in my poke our gold again might be. Full much I marvel, lord, and fain would know Wherefore and why unhanged didst let him go?"
Then answered the Duke singing on this wise:
"Good Pertinax, if on a tree Yon rogue were swinging high A deader rogue no man could see-- 'He's but a rogue!' says you to me, 'But a living rogue!' says I.
"And since he now alive doth go More honest he may die, Yon rogue an honest man may grow, If we but give him time, I trow, Says I to you, says I."
At this, Sir Pertinax growled in his beard--
GILL: A beard? O father--beard will never do! No proper knight a beard ever grew.' No knight could really romantic be Who wore a beard! So, father, to please me, No beard; they are, I think, such scrubby things--
MYSELF: Yet they are worn, sometimes, by poets and kings.
MYSELF: Oh, all right, My Gill, from your disparagement to save him, I, like a barber, will proceed to shave him.
Sir Pertinax, then, stroked his smooth-shaved chin, And thus to curse he softly did begin, "Par Dex, my lord--"
GILL: Your knight, dear father, seems to love to curse.
MYSELF: He does. A difficult matter, child, in verse--
MYSELF: Why, if you think a change desired, A change we'll have, for, truth to tell, This rhyming bothers me as well. So here awhile we'll sink to prose. Now, are you ready? Then here goes!
"Par Dex, my lord!" growled Sir Pertinax. "A malison on't, says I, saving thy lordly grace, yet a rogue is a rogue and, being rogue, should die right roguishly as is the custom and the law. For if, messire, if--per De and by Our Sweet Lady of Shene Chapel within the Wood, if, I say, in thy new and sudden-put-on attitude o' folly, thou wilt save alive all rogues soever, then by Saint Cuthbert his curse, by sweet Saint Benedict his blessed bones, by--"
"Hold now, Pertinax," said the Duke, slipping his lute into leathern bag and slinging it behind wide shoulders, "list ye, Sir Knight of Shene, and mark this, to wit: If a rogue in roguery die then rogue is he forsooth; but, mark this again, if a rogue be spared his life he may perchance and peradventure forswear, that is, eschew or, vulgarly speaking, turn from his roguish ways, and die as honest as I, aye, or even--thou!"