" Then he continued as if Hugo
had displayed the greatest interest: "I will tell thee, then, that
hedgehogs have many ways. I warrant thee this king's man knoweth naught
of them, any more than he knoweth the wood. Had he been some men, we
had been caught ere now. I fear him not overmuch. For do but see how he
is puffed up with undue pride and importance. And let me tell thee that
undue pride and importance and good sense dwell not in the same skull.
We shall therefore have the better of him."
Hugo made no reply, and Humphrey continued cheerfully: "A hedgehog will
find a hollow in a tree, and there he will bide, sleeping all day. At
night he will come forth. But first he must reach the ground. And this
he will do by rolling into a ball and dropping on the ends of his
spines. If the ground is beneath him, no harm is done. If this king's
man should be beneath him, I think not that he would cry out that
Fortune was with him when the spines of the hedgehog stuck into him."
"And how would the king's man be beneath him?" asked Hugo, dully.
"If the hedgehog be in the hollow of that low branch," answered
Humphrey, "and if the king's man should stand under at such time as the
hedgehog was ready to drop, then he would be beneath him.
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