“Well countered, Captain,” said the clerk; “but I will prove it otherwise.”
“How, sharp wit?”
“Why, look you; by the token that a theft is an abstraction, an abstraction is a theft. But I say an abstraction is no theft, sith it steals nothing but time, which is itself an abstraction. Is a thief a thief, therefore, who steals from himself?”
“Thou playest on the word, that hath another meaning.”
“God save your neck if you’ll insist on ’t. One day you’ll be caught in a reverie and hanged for an abstraction. For me, one word one meaning is enough.”
“What hanged—Nick hanged!” cried a voice, that of one of two gentlemen who at the moment came round the leafy angle of the bower. “What is his offence?”
Blount and the young man rose to their feet, the one with a jocund, the second with a respectful manner of salutation.
“Fair welcome, masters,” said the soldier. “Your wit shall save me a halter, or I’ll be hanged for it.”
The two new-comers were Mr. Greville and his alter ego Mr. Philip Sidney, the latter already the preux chevalier of his age. Though now in no more than his twenty-seventh year, his world-knowledge and accomplishments exceeded those of most contemporary gallants. Tall, spare, with a rather long melancholy face full of sweetness and intelligence, his whole aspect conveyed an assurance of reasonableness and liberality. His hair, warm yellow and somewhat sleek, was parted at one side into the long love-lock in vogue; his doublet and trunk-hose were of a sober grey but laced with a rich frilling of gold. So was his own quiet nature veined with light. A poet and scholar, a traveller and man of action, a courtier in the worthiest sense, some paltry squabble thrust upon him had banished him latterly from the side of the sovereign to whom his qualities were most endeared, and he was only present in Greenwich on a private affair during the absence of the Court. His friend and coetanian, the Lord Brooke to be—he who came to desire of posterity no greater recognition than that he had been Shakespeare’s friend—was a young man of like learning, sincerity, and skill in arms.
“Why, Nick,” quoth Sidney, “the alternative is certain. But whereby hangs the halter?”