I left Sandy kneeling there, corpse-faced but plucky
and hopeful, and rode down to the pigsty, and struck
up a trade with the swine-herds. I won their gratitude
by buying out all the hogs at the lump sum of sixteen
pennies, which was rather above latest quotations. I
was just in time; for the Church, the lord of the
manor, and the rest of the tax-gatherers would have
been along next day and swept off pretty much all the
stock, leaving the swine-herds very short of hogs and
Sandy out of princesses. But now the tax people
could be paid in cash, and there would be a stake left
besides. One of the men had ten children; and he
said that last year when a priest came and of his ten
pigs took the fattest one for tithes, the wife burst out