As for me, I stood holding the horses and looking about for any of my own quality who might show me the way to the stables.
Presently a long, lean, lathy youth slouched out of one of the gloomy entries. He stood amazed at the sight of me. I went to him to ask where I might bestow the horses, now standing weary-footed, hanging their heads after the long journey and the toil of the final ascent from the plain.
"Will you fight, outlander?" were the first words of my lathy friend from the entry. He seemed to have been drawn up recently from a period of detention in some deep draw-well, and to have the mould of the stones still upon him.
"Why," said I, "of course I will fight, and that gladly, if you will find me a man to fight with !"
"I will fight you myself," he said, swelling himself. "For the end of this candle I will fight half a dozen such Baltic sausages as you be."
"Like enough," said I, "all in good time. But in the mean time show me the stables, that I may put up my master's horses."
"What know I about you or your master's horses?" cried my Lad of Lath; "and pray why should I show the way to Bishop Peter's good stables to every wastrel that comes sneaking in off the street and asks the freedom of our house. For aught I know you may have come to steal corn. Though, if that be so, Lord love you, you have come to the wrong place."
"Come, stable-master," said I, placably, "let me see a corner and a wisp of straw and I will ease the poor beasts. That will not harm the Bishop Peter, whom my master has gone to visit. He is a friend of his, a man learned in ecclesiastical affairs, who comes to hold disputations with the Bishop—"
"Disputations—what be those? Anything with money at the end of them? If so, he will be a welcome guest at this house. There is very little money at the tail of anything in this town."
I thought I would try the effect of a broad silver piece upon him, at the same time giving the lad the information that disputations were kinds of fights with the tongues of men instead of with their fists.