She hath had it for her own since she was a child, and she would not deliver it, though I threatened her with your well-born anger." "And have you got it with you?
Surely you and she have not dared to keep it!" began the Chancellor, with gathering fury on his eyebrow.
"Yea, truly, truly, an you will have patience, my Lord, I have it here,"-said the man, drawing a necklace of golden bars curiously arranged from his leathern wallet; and, kneeling on his knee, he presented it to the Chancellor.
"How did you prevail with the maid ?" he asked, as soon as he had it in hand--"you used no constraint or force, I hope ?" "Nay, sir," said the man, "for my wife being dead and my daughter marriageable, she keeps house for me; and having a sweetheart betrothed a year ago she hath been laying aside plenishing gear and women's dainty gewgaws.

So these I took one by one, beginning with a mirror of polished brass, and made as if I would dash them in pieces if she discovered not where the chain of gold was hid." "And she revealed it ?" said Dessauer.
"Aye," said the man, "but none so willingly, as you might suppose.

I had Saint Peter's own trouble to get it from her.

Indeed, I prayed to the Holy Apostle to aid me." "What had Saint Peter to do with it ?" said the Councillor, pausing and looking humorsomely at the man, like an ascetic sparrow with his head at one side.
"Because our Holy Saint Peter is the only saint who understands the trouble men have with the contrariness of women." "Why so ?" cried the Chancellor, rubbing his hand with a curious pleasure at the colloquy.
"Because he only among the Apostles was a married man and had experience of a mother-in-law." "Art a wise forester.

Where got you that wisdom ?" "Why," said the man, modestly, "partly by nature, partly because I also have been married, and so have graduated in the wars." "It is the same thing," said the Chancellor, "according to your own telling." "Aye, sir," quoth the man, "but yet the young fellows will take no warning.