CHAPTER XXXV
GERARD awoke, and found Denys watching him with some anxiety.
"It is you for sleeping! Why, 'tis high noon."
"It was a blessed sleep," said Gerard, "methinks Heaven sent it me. It hath put as it were a veil between me and that awful night. To think that you and I sit here alive and well. How terrible a dream I seem to have had!"
"Ay, lad, that is the wise way to look at these things, when once they are past, why they are dreams, shadows. Break thy fast, and then thou wilt think no more on't. Moreover I promised to bring thee on to the town by noon, and take thee to his worship."
"What for?"
"He would put questions to thee; by the same when he was for waking thee to that end, but I withstood him earnestly, and vowed to bring thee to him in the morning."
"Thou shalt not break troth for me."
Gerard then sopped some rye bread in red wine and ate it to break his fast: then went with Denys over the scene of combat, and came back shuddering, and finally took the road with his friend, and kept peering through the hedges and expecting sudden attacks unreasonably, till they reached the little town. Denys took him to "The White Hart."
"No fear of cut-throats here," said he. "I know the landlord this many a year. He is a burgess, and looks to be bailiff. 'Tis here I was making for yestreen. But we lost time, and night overtook us—and—"