Gerard, panting. "I mean, I had made
ready for a robber, so I could not hold my hand."

"Ay, these chattering travellers have stuffed your head full of thieves
and assassins; they have not got a real live robber in their whole
nation. Nay, I'll carry the beast; bear thou my crossbow."

"We will carry it by turns, then," said Gerard, "for 'tis a heavy load:
poor thing, how its blood drips. Why did we slay it?"

"For supper and the reward the baillie of the next town shall give us."

"And for that it must die, when it had but just begun to live; and
perchance it hath a mother that will miss it sore this night, and loves
it as ours love us; more than mine does me."

"What, know you not that his mother was caught in a pitfall last month,
and her skin is now at the tanner's? and his father was stuck full of
cloth-yard shafts t'other day, and died like Julius Caesar, with his
hands folded on his bosom, and a dead dog in each of them?"

But Gerard would not view it jestingly. "Why, then," said he, "we have
killed one of God's creatures that was all alone in the world-as I am
this day, in this strange land."

"You young milksop," roared Denys, "these things must not be looked
at so, or not another bow would be drawn nor quarrel fly in forest nor
battlefield. Why, one of your kidney consorting with a troop of pikemen
should turn them to a row of milk-pails; it is ended, to Rome thou goest
not alone, for never wouldst thou reach the Alps in a whole skin. I take
thee to Remiremont, my native place, and there I marry thee to my young
sister, she is blooming as a peach. Thou shakest thy head? ah! I forgot;
thou lovest elsewhere, and art a one woman man, a creature to me scarce
conceivable. Well then I shall find thee, not a wife, nor a leman, but
a friend; some honest Burgundian who shall go with thee as far as Lyons;
and much I doubt that honest fellow will be myself, into whose liquor
thou has dropped sundry powders to make me love thee; for erst I endured
not doves in doublet and hose. From Lyons, I say, I can trust thee
by ship to Italy, which being by all accounts the very stronghold of
milksops, thou wilt there be safe: they will hear thy words, and make
thee their duke in a twinkling."

Gerard sighed. "In sooth I love not to think of this Dusseldorf, where
we are to part company, good friend."

They walked silently, each thinking of the separation at hand; the
thought checked trifling conversation, and at these mome