Gerard saw this needless pantomime with regret, and as soon as they had passed the brow of the hill said, "There is now but one course, we must run to Burgundy instead of walking;" and he set off, and ran the best part of a league without stopping.
Denys was fairly blown, and inquired what on earth had become of Gerard's fever. "I begin to miss it sadly," said he drily.
"I dropped it in Rhine, I trow," was the reply.
Presently they came to a little village, and here Denys purchased a loaf and a huge bottle of Rhenish wine. For he said "we must sleep in some hole or corner. If we lie at an inn we shall be taken in our beds." This was no more than common prudence on the old soldier's part.
The official network for catching law-breakers, especially plebeian ones, was very close in that age; though the co-operation of the public was almost null, at all events upon the Continent. The innkeepers were everywhere under close surveillance as to their travellers, for whose acts they were even in some degree responsible, more so it would seem than for their sufferings.
The friends were both glad when the sun set: and delighted, when after a long trudge under the stars (for the moon, if I remember right, did not rise till about 3 in the morning) they came to a large barn belonging to a house at some distance. A quantity of barley had been lately thrashed: for the heap of straw on one side the thrashing floor was almost as high as the unthrashed corn on the other.
"Here be two royal beds," said Denys, "which shall we lie on, the mow, or the straw?"
"The straw for me," said Gerard.
They sat on the heap, and ate their brown bread, and drank their wine, and then Denys covered his friend up in straw, and heaped it high above him, leaving him only a breathing-hole: "Water they say is death to fevered men; I'll make warm water on't any how."
Gerard bade him make his mind easy. "These few drops from Rhine cannot chill me. I feel heat enough in my body now to parch a kennel, or boil a cloud if I was in one." And with this epigram his consciousness went so rapidly he might really be said to "fall asleep."