'Like to be what?' the Lincolnshire man badgered him. 'Like to be what? To be what?'
'Nay, I know not,' Poins answered.
'Like to be what?' Hogben persisted.
'I know no Kat Howard,' Poins muttered sulkily. For he knew well that the Lady Katharine's name was up in the taverns along of Thomas Culpepper. And this Lincolnshire cow-dog was a knave too of Thomas's; therefore the one Kat Howard who was like to be the King's wench and the other Kat Howard known to Hogben might well be one and the same.
'Nay; if you will not, neither even will I,' Hogben said. 'You shall have no more of my tale.'
Poins kept his blue eyes along the road. Far away, with an odd leap, waving its arms abroad and coming by fits and starts, as a hare gambols along a path—a figure was tiny to see, coming from Ardres way towards Calais. It passed a load of hay on an ox-cart, and Poins could see the peasants beside it scatter, leap the dyke and fly to stand panting in the fields. The figure was clenching its fists; then it fell to kicking the oxen; when they had overset the cart into the dyke, it came dancing along with the same hare's gait.
'That is too like the repute of Thomas Culpepper to be other than Thomas Culpepper,' the young Poins said. 'I will go meet him.'
He started to his feet, loosed the sword in its scabbard; but the Lincolnshire man had his halberd across the gateway.
'Pass! Shew thy pass!' he said vindictively.
'I go but to meet him,' Poins snarled.