Lay more body to it, lad, and it will come
to you. If your bow be not stiff, how can you hope for a twenty-
score flight. Feathers? Aye, plenty and of the best. Here,
peacock at a groat each. Surely a dandy archer like you,
Tom Beverley, with gold earrings in your ears, would have no
feathering but peacocks?"
"So the shaft fly straight, I care not of the feather," said the
bowman, a tall young Yorkshireman, counting out pennies on the
palm of his horny hand.
"Gray goose-feathers are but a farthing. These on the left are a
halfpenny, for they are of the wild goose, and the second feather
of a fenny goose is worth more than the pinion of a tame one.
These in the brass tray are dropped feathers, and a dropped
feather is better than a plucked one. Buy a score of these, lad,
and cut them saddle-backed or swine-backed, the one for a dead
shaft and the other for a smooth flyer, and no man in the company
will swing a better-fletched quiver over his shoulder."
It chanced that the opinion of the bowyer on this and other points
differed from that of Long Ned of Widdington, a surly
straw-bearded Yorkshireman, who had listened with a sneering face
to his counsel. Now he broke in suddenly upon the bowyer's talk.
"You would do better to sell bows than to try to teach others how
to use them," said he; "for indeed, Bartholomew, that head of
thine has no more sense within it than it has hairs without.
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