“It will be difficult,” replied the other.
Into the tavern they turned, and the noise suddenly subsided.
“What do ye here, ye reprobates, that ye stand drinking, dicing, quarrelling? To your hostels, every one of you,” said the first.
Martin expected scornful resistance, and was surprised to see that instead, all the rapscallions evacuated the place, and the “proctors,” as we should now call them, remained to remonstrate with the host, whose license they threatened to withdraw.
“How can I help it?” he said. “They be too many for me.”
“If you cannot keep order, seek another trade,” was the stern response. “We cannot have the morals of our scholars corrupted.”
“Bless you, sirs, it is they who corrupt me. I don’t know half the wickedness they do.”
Our readers need not believe him, the proctors did not.
But Martin took the warning, and was bent on getting home, only he lost his way, and could not find it again. It was not for want of asking; but the young scholars he met preferred lies to truth, in the mere frolic of puzzling a newcomer, and sent him first to Frideswide’s, thence to the East Gate, near Saint Clement’s Chapel, and he was making his way back with difficulty along the High Street when he heard an awful confusion and uproar about the “Quatre Voies” (Carfax) Conduit.
“Down with the lubberly North men!”