“What news?” said he, “and speak not to me unless it be to say, dinner is served.”
He looked pale and harassed, and I think, although the little room had a bed and a chair, he had stood upright in it all day, touching nothing.
But when I had him down to dinner, he touched a good deal, and told me, in explanation, that the meal I gave him last night had been the first for three days, and that, then, he was too eager for news to take all he might.
When I told him of the hue and cry, and how near the watch was on the scent, he turned to me and said:
“Where shall we go, Humphrey?”
Which meant, that wherever he went, he counted on me to follow. So I told him of my errand to Rochelle, and of the Miséricorde, which lay below the Bridge. Then his face brightened.
“That is well,” said he. “It matters not whether we go to France or the Pole, so I breathe some freer air than this of England. Let us start now. We must not go together. I will take the wherry while you go by land.”
“First,” said I, “put on this cast-off suit of mine, which I thought to give away to a beggar man, once; but thank Heaven I did not.”
“You give it to a beggar now,” said he, “and I thank you, Humphrey, for a gift I never expected to take from you.”
Then we hid the dead carter’s clothes in the river; and, not long after, a skiff put out from shore with a big ’prentice lad in it, who rowed lazily Bridgewards.