"And what doest thou here?"
[Illustration: Richard Wood finds Walter Skinner]
"Ay, Richard Wood, it is I. And what I do here is no concern of thine.
Here have I been a day and a night and this second day. Little have I
had to eat, and my drinking-horn is but now empty. And I have been
planted in a miry pool. And I have lost my horse and my way also; and
have floundered into more bogs and out of them than can be found in all
Robert Sadler's Ireland. Were I king, I would have no Isle of Axholme
in all my dominions. Could I do no better, I would pull down the hill
of Lincoln and cart it hither to fill these vile water-holes. Do but
see my doublet and hose. Were I called suddenly to the palace would not
the king and the court despise me as a drunken ruffler from some
revel-rout that had fallen from his horse? When all the blame is to be
laid on this Isle of Axholme, which ought, by right, to belong to
France, since it is full of frogs."
"Thou art crazed, as thou always art when thou drinkest," said Richard
Wood, coldly.
"Dost thou say I have been drinking?" demanded Walter Skinner, starting
up.
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