“To my thinking now,” said the Jester, who was frequently wont to act as peacemaker in the family, “our master did not propose to hurt Fangs, but only to affright him. For, if you observed, he rose in his stirrups, as thereby meaning to overcast the mark; and so he would have done, but Fangs happening to bound up at the very moment, received a scratch, which I will be bound to heal with a penny’s breadth of tar.”

“If I thought so,” said Gurth⁠—“if I could but think so⁠—but no⁠—I saw the javelin was well aimed⁠—I heard it whizz through the air with all the wrathful malevolence of him who cast it, and it quivered after it had pitched in the ground, as if with regret for having missed its mark. By the hog dear to St. Anthony, I renounce him!”

And the indignant swineherd resumed his sullen silence, which no efforts of the Jester could again induce him to break.