"Supper!" echoed the captain, springing up. "Do you cast your filthy supper in my teeth? Nay, then, I'll cast it in thine own."
With this, thoroughly enraged, Captain Ravenshaw seized the particular capon to which the gallant had alluded, and flung it across the table into the gallant's face. It struck with a thud, and, rebounding, left the young man a countenance both startled and greasy. Not content, the offended captain thereupon reached forth to the fowl which had been served as companion to the capon, and this he hurled in the same direction. But he aimed a little too high, moreover the fop ducked his head, and so the juicy missile sped across the room, to lodge plump against the stomach of a person who had just then come into view in the open doorway.
This person showed lean in body and shabby in raiment. He made a swift, instinctive grasp at the thing with which he had come so unexpectedly in contact, and happened to catch it before it could fall to the floor. He held it up with both hands to his gaze a moment, and then, having ascertained beyond doubt its nature, he suddenly turned and vanished with it. Let us follow him, leaving behind us the scene in the tavern room, which scene, upon the landlady's rushing in to preserve order for the good name of the house, was very soon after restored to a condition of peace by the wrathful departure of Ravenshaw from the company of an offender too young for him to chastise with the sword.
The ill-clad person who clutched the cooked fowl, which accident had thus summarily bestowed upon him, made short work of fleeing down the stairs and out into the black, chill February night. Once outside, though he could not see his hand before his face, he turned toward Cheapside and stumbled forward along the miry way, his desire evidently being to put himself so far from the Windmill tavern that he might not be overtaken by any one who could lay claim to the fowl.
The air was damp as well as cold. The fugitive, keeping his ungloved hands warm by spreading them around the fowl, which was fresh from the spit, had to grope his way through an inky wind. He listened for possible footfalls behind him, but he heard none, and so he chuckled inwardly and held his prize close to his breast with a sense of security. Now and then he raised it to his nostrils, in anticipation of the feast he should enjoy upon arriving at the resting-place he had in mind. He would have made a strange spectacle to anybody who might have been able to see him from one of the rattling casements as he passed; but so dark it was that downlookers could no more have seen him than he could see the painted plaster, carved cross-timbers, projecting windows, and gabled roof-peaks of the tall houses that lined the narrow street through which he fled.
At one place a lantern hanging over a door threw a faint light upon him for a moment, and showed a young man's face, with sharp features and a soft expression; but the face was instantly gone in the darkness, and there was no other night-walker abroad in the street to have seen it while it was visible.
"Surely," he meditated, as he went, "the time of miracles has returned. And even a starved scholar is found worthy of Heaven's interposition. With the temerity of the famished, I enter a tavern, ascend the stairs, and steal into a room which I take to be empty because no sound comes from it, my only hope being to pilfer a little warmth nobody will miss, perchance to fall heir to a drop of wine at the bottom of a glass, or a bone upon an uncleared table. And lo, I find myself in the presence of a gentleman asleep before a pot of mulled canary, which he has scarce wet his throat withal. In three swallows I make the canary my own, just in time to set down the pot before in comes a tapster. I feign I am in search of friends, who must be in t'other chamber. To make good the deceit, I must needs look in at t'other chamber door; when, behold, some follower of Mars, who looks as hungry as myself, pelts me with poultry. It is plainly a gift of the gods, and I am no such ill-mannered clown as to stay and inquire into the matter. Well, gaudeamus igitur, my sweet bird; here we are at St. Mary Cole Church, on the steps of which we shall make each other's better acquaintance. Jove!—or rather Bacchus!—what tumult a pint or so of mulled wine makes in the head of a poor master of arts, when too suddenly imbibed!"
He went half-way up the steps and sat down, crouching into the smallest figure possible, as if he might thus offer the least surface to the cold. Sinking his teeth into the succulent breast of the roast fowl, he forgot the weather in the joy of eating. But he had scarce taken two bites when he was fain to suspend his pleasure, for the sound of rapid footfalls came along the way he had just traversed. He took alarm.
"Sit quiet now, in God's name, Master Holyday!" he mentally adjured himself. "'Tis mayhap one in search of the fowl. Night, I am beholden to thee for thy mantle."