Chapter VI

Nay--for it's kind of you, Madam, to sit by an old dying wife.
But say nothing hard of my boy, I have only an hour of life.
I kissed my boy in the prison, before he went out to die.
"They dared me to do it," he said, and he never has told me a lie.
I whipt him for robbing an orchard once when he was but a child--
"The farmer dared me to do it," he said; he was always so wild--
And idle--and couldn't be idle--my Willy--he never could rest.
The King should have made him a soldier, he would have been
one of his best.