The fight was over then. It had run its course, and Greeks and Trojans were looking up their friends who had fallen in the fray. Several of them lay here in the barber's tent, some with broken heads and various wounds and bruises about their bodies, but one poor Greek it seemed had broken his leg in falling.
"And all over this fellow Erasmus, who is no Englishman either," said one.
"Aye, but he's worth fighting for," said the young Greek who had been carried in by the pedlar; "if you could but read the Greek New Testament of Erasmus, my masters, you would say a new light had dawned for the world." *
The pedlar shrugged his shoulders and touched his forehead as he looked significantly at the barber, but the lad saw it, and murmured faintly, "I know what I am talking about. Is that you, Standish?" he said, as another student pushed his way in.
* See Preface.
"Aye. What! are you hurt, Miles Paton? Where is the damage?" he asked.
"My head and my leg," replied his friend.
"I don't think it's broken now," said the barber, "but he can't stand."
"We'll carry him home," said the other, and he fetched a companion, paid the few pence charged by the barber for dressing the wound on his head, and then, lifting the patient in their arms, bore him through the crowd to his college room, which was little more than a bare cell, with a table and stool, chest and bed, and a few books.
They carried him through the streets as gently as they could, but the fair had drawn many strangers into the town, and it was full of bustling, jostling crowds, and the roadways at that time having no proper footpath, they had to dodge horses and foot passengers as best they could as they carried their friend from the fair.