John. Why, they are in the right, to be sure, if they resolve to venture staying in town.
Thomas. Nay, I might even resolve to stay within doors too, for, except a suit of sails that my master has in hand, and which I am just finishing, I am like to get no more work a great while. There’s no trade stirs now. Workmen and servants are turned off everywhere, so that I might be glad to be locked up too; but I do not see they will be willing to consent to that, any more than to the other.
John. Why, what will you do then, brother? And what shall I do? for I am almost as bad as you. The people where I lodge are all gone into the country but a maid, and she is to go next week, and to shut the house quite up, so that I shall be turned adrift to the wide world before you, and I am resolved to go away too, if I knew but where to go.
Thomas. We were both distracted we did not go away at first; then we might have travelled anywhere. There’s no stirring now; we shall be starved if we pretend to go out of town. They won’t let us have victuals, no, not for our money, nor let us come into the towns, much less into their houses.
John. And that which is almost as bad, I have but little money to help myself with neither.
Thomas. As to that, we might make shift, I have a little, though not much; but I tell you there’s no stirring on the road. I know a couple of poor honest men in our street have attempted to travel, and at Barnet, or Whetstone, or thereabouts, the people offered to fire at them if they pretended to go forward, so they are come back again quite discouraged.
John. I would have ventured their fire if I had been there. If I had been denied food for my money they should have seen me take it before their faces, and if I had tendered money for it they could not have taken any course with me by law.
Thomas. You talk your old soldier’s language, as if you were in the Low Countries now, but this is a serious thing. The people have good reason to keep anybody off that they are not satisfied are sound, at such a time as this, and we must not plunder them.
John. No, brother, you mistake the case, and mistake me too. I would plunder nobody; but for any town upon the road to deny me leave to pass through the town in the open highway, and deny me provisions for my money, is to say the town has a right to starve me to death, which cannot be true.
Thomas. But they do not deny you liberty to go back again from whence you came, and therefore they do not starve you.