ter their masters
in the wicked world have used them up, with labor and sorrow, and made
them wade knee-deep in blood--I'm tired of blood, and tired of gold.
I'll march no more; I'll fight no more; I'll hunger no more after vanity
and vexation of spirit. What shall I get by it? Maybe I shall leave my
bones in the wilderness. I can but do that here. Maybe I shall get home
with a few pezos, to die an old cripple in some stinking hovel, that a
monkey would scorn to lodge in here. You may go on; it'll pay you. You
may be a rich man, and a knight, and live in a fine house, and drink
good wine, and go to Court, and torment your soul with trying to
get more, when you've got too much already; plotting and planning to
scramble upon your neighbor's shoulders, as they all did--Sir Richard,
and Mr. Raleigh, and Chichester, and poor dear old Sir Warham, and all
of them that I used to watch when I lived before. They were no happier
than I was then; I'll warrant they are no happier now. Go your ways,
captain; climb to glory upon some other backs than ours, and leave us
here in peace, alone with God and God's woods, and the good wives that
God has given us, to play a little like school children. It's long since
I've had play-hours; and now I'll be a little child once more, with the
flowers, and the singing birds, and the silver fishes in the stream,
that are at peace, and think no harm, and want neither clothes, nor
money, nor knighthood, nor peerage, but just take what comes; and their
heavenly Father feedeth them, and Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these--and will He not much more feed us, that are
of more value than many sparrows?"

"And will you live here, shut out from all Christian ordinances?"

"Christian ordinances? Adam and Eve had no parsons in Paradise. The Lord
was their priest, and the Lord was their shepherd, and He'll be ours
too. But go your ways, sir, and send up Sir John Brimblecombe, and let
him marry us here Church fashion (though we have sworn troth to each
other before God already), and let him give us the Holy Sacrament once
and for all, and then read the funeral service over us, and go his ways,
and count us for dead, sir--for dead we are to the wicked worthless
world we came out of three years ago. And when the Lord chooses to call
us, the little birds will cover us with leaves, as they did the babies
in the wood, and fresher flowers will grow out of our graves, sir, than
out of yours in