ow many are you?

John. Nay, we do not ask enough for all our company; we are in three
companies. If you will send us bread for twenty men and about six or
seven women for three days, and show us the way over the field you speak
of, we desire not to put your people into any fear for us; we will go
out of our way to oblige you, though we are as free from infection as
you are.*

Constable. And will you assure us that your other people shall offer us
no new disturbance?

John. No, no you may depend on it.

Constable. You must oblige yourself, too, that none of your people shall
come a step nearer than where the provisions we send you shall be set
down.

John. I answer for it we will not.

Accordingly they sent to the place twenty loaves of bread and three or
four large pieces of good beef, and opened some gates, through which
they passed; but none of them had courage so much as to look out to see
them go, and, as it was evening, if they had looked they could not have
seen them as to know how few they were.

This was John the soldier's management. But this gave such an alarm to
the county, that had they really been two or three hundred the whole
county would have been raised upon them, and they would have been sent
to prison, or perhaps knocked on the head.

* Here he called to one of his men, and bade him order
Captain Richard and his people to march the lower way on the
side of the marches, and meet them in the forest; which was
all a sham, for they had no Captain Richard, or any such
company. [Footnote in the original.]

They were soon made sensible of this, for two days afterwards they found
several parties of horsemen and footmen also about, in pursuit of three
companies of men, armed, as they said, with muskets, who were broke
out from London and had the plague upon them, and that were not only
spreading the distemper among the people, but plundering the country.

As they saw now the consequence of their case, they soon saw the danger
they were in; so they resolved by the advice also of the old soldier to
divide themselves again. John and his two comrades, with the horse,
went away, as if towards Waltham; the other in two companies, but all a
little asunder, and went towards Epping.

The first night they encamped all in the forest, and not far off of one
another, but not setting up the tent, lest that should discover them. On
the other hand, Richard went to work with his axe and