Gray. Well, ’tis all one; yet you might, I think, let a starving fellow creature earn a trifle.
Gwin. Starving!
Gray. I have scarcely broken bread these two days.
Gwin. Unhappy creature—here—(gives money—Grayling offers to take portmanteau.) no, I will not trouble you. Go, get food, and reform your way of life.
[Exit. L.
Gray. Reform! too late—too late. Had I the will time would not let me; a few months—nay, weeks, days—and the passenger may pause at the lifeless corse of Grayling stretched in the highway. Every eye looks scorn upon me—every hand shrinks at my touch—every head’s averted from me, as though a pestilence were in my glance.—Intemperance and fierce passion have brought upon me premature old age—my limbs are palsied, and my eyesight fails.—What’s this, alms—alms—won by wretched supplication? well, ’twill buy me a short forgetfulness—oblivion is now my only happiness.
[Exit. L.
Enter Blackthorn and Will Ash. R.
Black. You were wrong to let him pass you: had you but watched my motions, he could not have escaped.
Ash. But in the day time?