ece.'

'Ahem!' Mr Culpeper said suddenly. 'I'll prove it to you. When I was
physician to Saye's Horse, and fought the King--or rather the man
Charles Stuart--in Oxfordshire (I had my learning at Cambridge), the
plague was very hot all around us. I saw it at close hands. He who
says I am ignorant of the plague, for example, is altogether beside the
bridge.'

'We grant it,' said Puck solemnly. 'But why talk of the plague this rare
night?'

'To prove my argument. This Oxfordshire plague, good people, being
generated among rivers and ditches, was of a werish, watery nature.
Therefore it was curable by drenching the patient in cold water, and
laying him in wet cloths; or at least, so I cured some of them. Mark
this. It bears on what shall come after.'

'Mark also, Nick,' said Puck, that we are not your College of
Physicians, but only a lad and a lass and a poor lubberkin. Therefore be
plain, old Hyssop on the Wall!'

'To be plain and in order with you, I was shot in the chest while
gathering of betony from a brookside near Thame, and was took by the
King's men before their Colonel, one Blagg or Bragge, whom I warned
honestly that I had spent the week past among our plague-stricken. He
flung me off into a cowshed, much like this here, to die, as I supposed;
but one of their priests crept in by night and dressed my wound. He was
a Sussex man like myself.'

'Who was that?' said Puck suddenly. 'Zack Tutshom?'

'No, Jack Marget,' said Mr Culpeper.

'Jack Marget of New College? The little merry man that stammered so? Why
a plague was stuttering Jack at Oxford then?' said Puck.

'He had come out of Sussex in hope of being made a Bishop when the King
should have conquered the rebels, as he styled us Parliament men. His
College had lent the King some monies too, which they never got again,
no more than simple Jack got his bishopric. When we met he had had a
bitter bellyful of King's promises, and wished to return to his wife and
babes. This came about beyond expectation, for, so soon as I could
stand of my wound, the man Blagge made excuse that I had been among the
plague, and Jack had been tending me, to thrust us both out from their
camp. The King had done with Jack now that Jack's College had lent the
money, and Blagge's physician could not abide me because I would not
sit silent and see him butcher the sick. (He was a College of Physicians
man!) So Blagge, I say, thrust us both out, with many vile words, for a
pair of