"Fie, never flinch!" cried his gay companion; "there is but one thing on earth should make a bold man coldhearted."
"And what may that be?" asked the other; "to lose his dinner?"
"No, good life!" exclaimed the first,--"to lose his lady's love."
"Ay, is it there the saddle galls?" said Hal of Hadnock.
"Faith, not a whit," answered his fellow-traveller; "if it did, I should leave off singing. You are wrong in your guess, Master Hal. I may lose my lady, but not my lady's love, or I am much mistaken; and while that stays with me I will both sing and hope."
"'Tis the best comfort," replied Hal of Hadnock, "and generally brings success. But what am I to call you, fair sir? for it mars one's speech to have no name for a companion."
"Now, were not my uncle's house within three miles," said the other, "I would pay you in your own coin, and bid you call me Dick of Andover; for I am fond of secrets, and keep them faithfully, except when they are likely to be found out; but such being the case now, you must call me Richard of Woodville, if you would have my friends know you mean a poor squire who has ever sought the places where hard blows are plenty; but who missed his spurs at Bramham Moor by being sent by his good friend Sir Thomas Rokeby to bear tidings of Northumberland's incursion to the King. I would fain have staid and carried news of the victory; but, good sooth, Sir Thomas said he could trust me to tell the truth clearly as well as fight, and that, though he could trust the others to fight, he could not find one who would not make the matter either more or less to the King, than it really was. See what bad luck it is to be a plain-spoken fellow."
"Good luck as well as bad," replied Hal of Hadnock; and in such conversation they pursued their way, riding not quite so fast as either had been doing when first they met, and slackening their pace to a walk, when, about half a mile farther forward, they quitted the high road and took to the narrow lanes of the country, which, as the reader may easily conceive, were not quite as good for travelling in those days, as even at present, when in truth they are often bad enough. They soon issued forth, however, upon a more open track, where the river again ran along by the roadside, sheltered here and there by copses which occasionally rose from the very brink; and, just as they regained it, the moon appearing over the low banks that fell crossing each other over its course, poured, from beneath the fringe of heavy clouds that canopied the sky above, her full pale light upon the whole extent of the stream. There was something fine but melancholy in the sight, grave and even grand; and though there were none of those large objects which seem generally necessary to produce the sublime, there was a feeling of vastness given by the broad expanse of shadow overhead, and the long line of glistening brightness below, broken by the thick black masses of brushwood that here and there bent over the flat surface of the water.
"This is fine," said Hal of Hadnock; "I love such night scenes with the solitary moon and the deep woods and the gleaming river--ay, even the dark clouds themselves. They are to me like a king's fate, where so many heavy things brood over him, so many black and impenetrable things surround him, and where yet often a clear yet cold effulgence pours upon his way, grander and calmer than the warmer and gayer beams that fall upon the course of ordinary men."
His companion turned and gazed at him for a moment by the moonlight, but made no observation, till the other continued, pointing with his hand, "What is that drifting on the water? Surely 'tis a man's head!"