"What, lad, did not the watch take thee, then?"
"Yes, faith, and kept me all night in a cage, where I think I have turned foul inside with the smell of stale tobacco smoke. I am come but now from the justice's hall."
"Man, you've had a quick journey of it. By this light, you must have found money in those new clothes, and tickled the palm of a constable."
"No; the justice might have sent me back to the stinking hole, for all the money I had to give anybody. When he asked me my name, I bethought me to reply, 'Sir Ralph Holyday;' which was no more than my right at Cambridge, when I became a graduate there. But, seeing me in these clothes instead of in black, the justice thought the 'Sir' was of knighthood, not of scholarship. And so he said he could make nothing out of the watchmen's stories, which agreed not. I then addressed him respectfully in Latin; and, lest it might be seen that he did not understand me, he got rid of me forthwith."
"We'll drink his health—but not yet. While I have money to show, we'll bespeak lodgings, and so make sure of sleeping indoors, for a week o' nights, come what may. These clothes will get us curtseys and smiles from any hostess—except them that have already lodged me."
"Ay, we are fine enough above the waist, but our poor legs and feet are sorry company for our upper halves."
"Why, we must see to that when we meet our four asses again. Meanwhile our cloaks will cover us to the knees, and if we carry our heads high enough, nobody will dare look scornful at our feet. Remember, we are gallants while these clothes last; swaggering gallants, that give the wall to no man. And while we go seek lodgings, I'll tell thee how thou shalt earn thy share of these coxcombs' wastings. Hast ever travelled abroad?"
"No," said the scholar, falling into the captain's stride as the pair went westward.
"No matter. Thou hast read books of other countries, and heard travellers tell of foreign cities?"
"Yes; I've read and heard much; and remembered some of it."