Thras. Sir, I am the other plaintiff, and this is my counsellor: I beseech your honour be favourable to me in equity.
Judge. O, Signor Mizaldo, what can you say in this gentleman's behalf?
Lawyer. Faith, sir, as yet little good.—Sir, tell you your own case to the Judge, for I have so many matters in my head, that I have almost forgotten it.
Thras. Is the wind in that door? Why then, my lord, thus. I took up of this cursed Usurer, for so I may well term him, a commodity of forty pounds, whereof I received ten pound in money, and thirty pound in lute-strings, whereof I could by great friendship make but five pounds: for the assurance of this bad commodity I bound him my land in recognisance: I came at my day, and tendered him his money, and he would not take it: for the redress of my open wrong I crave but justice.
Judge. What say you to this, sir?
Usurer. That first he had no lute-strings of me; for, look you, sir, I have his own hand to my book for the receipt of forty pound.
Thras. That was, sir, but a device of him to colour the statute.
Judge. Well, he hath thine own hand, and we can crave no more in law.—But now, sir, he says his money was tendered at the day and hour.
Usurer. This is manifest contrary, sir, and on that I will depose; for here is the obligation, "to be paid between three and four in the afternoon," and the clock struck four before he offered it, and the words be "between three and four," therefore to be tendered before four.