man pricker at his heels. 'Ouvre,' he cried, 'ouvre,' or
some such word, making signs for me to open the gate; and then 'Merci,'
as though he were adrad of me. And you talk of an English king?"

"I do not marvel at it," cried the Cambrig scholar, speaking in the high
drawling voice which was common among his class. "It is not a tongue
for men of sweet birth and delicate upbringing. It is a foul, snorting,
snarling manner of speech. For myself, I swear by the learned Polycarp
that I have most ease with Hebrew, and after that perchance with
Arabian."

"I will not hear a word said against old King Ned," cried Hordle John
in a voice like a bull. "What if he is fond of a bright eye and a saucy
face. I know one of his subjects who could match him at that. If
he cannot speak like an Englishman I trow that he can fight like an
Englishman, and he was hammering at the gates of Paris while ale-house
topers were grutching and grumbling at home."

This loud speech, coming from a man of so formidable an appearance,
somewhat daunted the disloyal party, and they fell into a sullen
silence, which enabled Alleyne to hear something of the talk which was
going on in the further corner between the physician, the tooth-drawer
and the gleeman.

"A raw rat," the man of drugs was saying, "that is what it is ever my
use to order for the plague--a raw rat with its paunch cut open."

"Might it not be broiled, most learned sir?" asked the tooth-drawer. "A
raw rat sounds a most sorry and cheerless dish."

"Not to be eaten," cried the physician, in high disdain. "Why should any
man eat such a thing?"

"Why indeed?" asked the gleeman, taking a long drain at his tankard.

"It is to be placed on the sore or swelling. For the rat, mark you,
being a foul-living creature, hath a natural drawing or affinity for
all foul things, so that the noxious humors pass from the man into the
unclean beast."

"Would that cure the black death, master?" asked Jenkin.

"Aye, truly would it, my fair son."

"Then I am right glad that there were none who knew of it. The black
death is the best friend that ever the common folk had in England."

"How that then?" asked Hordle John.

"Why, friend, it is easy to see that you have not worked with your hands
or you would not need to ask. When half the folk in the country were
dead it was then that the other half could pick and choose who they
would work for, and for what wage. That is why I say that the murrain
was