rvice. Launcelot Lovell made me an offer, as
you call it, and we were married in Roman fashion; that is, we gave each
other our right hands, and promised to be true to each other. We lived
together two years, travelling sometimes by ourselves, sometimes with our
relations; I bore him two children, both of which were still-born,
partly, I believe, from the fatigue I underwent in running about the
country telling dukkerin when I was not exactly in a state to do so, and
partly from the kicks and blows which my husband, Launcelot, was in the
habit of giving me every night, provided I came home with less than five
shillings, which it is sometimes impossible to make in the country,
provided no fair or merry-making is going on. At the end of two years my
husband, Launcelot, whistled a horse from a farmer's field, and sold it
for forty pounds; and for that horse he was taken, put in prison, tried,
and condemned to be sent to the other country for life. Two days before
he was to be sent away, I got leave to see him in the prison, and in the
presence of the turnkey I gave him a thin cake of gingerbread, in which
there was a dainty saw which could cut through iron. I then took on
wonderfully, turned my eyes inside out, fell down in a seeming fit, and
was carried out of the prison. That same night my husband sawed his
irons off, cut through the bars of his window, and dropping down a height
of fifty feet, lighted on his legs, and came and joined me on a heath
where I was camped alone. We were just getting things ready to be off,
when we heard people coming, and sure enough they were runners after my
husband, Launcelot Lovell; for his escape had been discovered within a
quarter of an hour after he had got away. My husband, without bidding me
farewell, set off at full speed, and they after him, but they could not
take him, and so they came back and took me, and shook me, and threatened
me, and had me before the poknees, {77a} who shook his head at me, and
threatened me in order to make me discover where my husband was, but I
said I did not know, which was true enough, not that I would have told
him if I had. So at last the poknees and the runners, {77b} not being
able to make anything out of me, were obliged to let me go, and I went in
search of my husband. I wandered about with my cart for several days in
the direction in which I saw him run off, with my eyes bent on the
ground, but could see no marks of him; at last, coming