“The saints forfend!” said the knight. “Y’ are speedy, but not sly. Ye would blunder me headforemost into John Amend-All’s camp. I thank you both for your good courage; but, in sooth, it may not be.”
Then Hatch offered himself, and he also was refused.
“I want you here, good Bennet; y’ are my right hand, indeed,” returned the knight; and then, several coming forward in a group, Sir Daniel at length selected one and gave him the letter.
“Now,” he said, “upon your good speed and better discretion we do all depend. Bring me a good answer back, and before three weeks I will have purged my forest of these vagabonds that brave us to our faces. But mark it well, Throgmorton: the matter is not easy. Ye must steal forth under night, and go like a fox; and how ye are to cross Till I know not, neither by the bridge nor ferry.”
“I can swim,” returned Throgmorton. “I will come soundly, fear not.”
“Well, friend, get ye to the buttery,” replied Sir Daniel. “Ye shall swim first of all in nut-brown ale.” And with that he turned back into the hall.
“Sir Daniel hath a wise tongue,” said Hatch aside to Dick. “See, now, where many a lesser man had glossed the matter over, he speaketh it out plainly to his company. Here is a danger, ’a saith, and here difficulty; and jesteth in the very saying. Nay, by St. Barbary, he is a born captain! Not a man but he is some deal heartened up! See how they fall again to work.”
This praise of Sir Daniel put a thought in the lad’s head.
“Bennet,” he said, “how came my father by his end?”
“Ask me not that,” replied Hatch. “I had no hand nor knowledge in it; furthermore, I will even be silent, Master Dick. For look you, in a man’s own business there he may speak; but of hearsay matters and of common talk, not so. Ask me Sir Oliver—ay, or Carter, if ye will; not me.”