but little money to help
myself with neither.

Thomas. As to that, we might make shift, I have a little, though not
much; but I tell you there's no stirring on the road. I know a couple of
poor honest men in our street have attempted to travel, and at Barnet,
or Whetstone, or thereabouts, the people offered to fire at them if they
pretended to go forward, so they are come back again quite discouraged.

John. I would have ventured their fire if I had been there. If I had
been denied food for my money they should have seen me take it before
their faces, and if I had tendered money for it they could not have
taken any course with me by law.

Thomas. You talk your old soldier's language, as if you were in the Low
Countries now, but this is a serious thing. The people have good reason
to keep anybody off that they are not satisfied are sound, at such a
time as this, and we must not plunder them.

John. No, brother, you mistake the case, and mistake me too. I would
plunder nobody; but for any town upon the road to deny me leave to pass
through the town in the open highway, and deny me provisions for my
money, is to say the town has a right to starve me to death, which
cannot be true.

Thomas. But they do not deny you liberty to go back again from whence
you came, and therefore they do not starve you.

John. But the next town behind me will, by the same rule, deny me leave
to go back, and so they do starve me between them. Besides, there is no
law to prohibit my travelling wherever I will on the road.

Thomas. But there will be so much difficulty in disputing with them at
every town on the road that it is not for poor men to do it or undertake
it, at such a time as this is especially.

John. Why, brother, our condition at this rate is worse than anybody
else's, for we can neither go away nor stay here. I am of the same mind
with the lepers of Samaria: 'If we stay here we are sure to die', I mean
especially as you and I are stated, without a dwelling-house of our own,
and without lodging in anybody else's. There is no lying in the street
at such a time as this; we had as good go into the dead-cart at once.
Therefore I say, if we stay here we are sure to die, and if we go away
we can but die; I am resolved to be gone.

Thomas. You will go away. Whither will you go, and what can you do? I
would as willingly go away as you, if I knew whither. But we have no
acquaintance, no friends. Here we were born, and here we must di