1st Outlaw: Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about you;
If not, we'll make you sit, and rifle you.
Speed: Sir, we are undone! these are the villains
That all the travellers do fear so much.
Val: My friends,--
1st Out: That's not so, sir, we are your enemies.
2d Out: Peace! we'll hear him.
3d Out: Ay, by my beard, will we;
For he's a proper man.
--Two Gentlemen of Verona
The nocturnal adventures of Gurth were not yet concluded; indeed he
himself became partly of that mind, when, after passing one or two
straggling houses which stood in the outskirts of the village, he found
himself in a deep lane, running between two banks overgrown with hazel
and holly, while here and there a dwarf oak flung its arms altogether
across the path. The lane was moreover much rutted and broken up by the
carriages which had recently transported articles of various kinds to
the tournament; and it was dark, for the banks and bushes intercepted
the light of the harvest moon.
From the village were heard the distant sounds of revelry, mixed
occasionally with loud laughter, sometimes broken by screams, and
sometimes by wild strains of distant music. All these sounds, intimating
the disorderly state of the town, crowded with military nobles and
their dissolute attendants, gave Gurth some uneasiness. "The Jewess was
right," he said to himself. "By heaven and St Dunstan, I would I were
safe at my journey's end with all this treasure! Here are such numbers,
I will not say of arrant thieves, but of errant knights and errant
squires, errant monks and errant minstrels, errant jugglers and errant
jesters, that a man with a single merk would be in danger, much more a
poor swineherd with a whole bagful of zecchins. Would I were out of
the shade of these infernal bushes, that I might at least see any of St
Nicholas's clerks before they spring on my shoulders."
Gurth accordingly hastened his pace, in order to gain the open common
to which the lane led, but was not so fortunate as to accomplish his
object. Just as he had attained the upper end of the lane, where the
underwood was thickest, four men sprung upon him, even as his fears
anticipated, two from each side of the road, and seized him so fast,
that resistance, if at first practicable, would have been now too
late.--"Surrender your charge," said one of them; "we are the deliverers
of the commonwealth, who ease every man of his burden."
"You should not ease me of mine so lightly," muttered Gurth, whose
surly honesty could not be tamed even by the pressure of immediate
violence,--"had I it but in my power to give three strokes in its
defence."