inst a small hostel.

'We have won the victory, my lord King, and we mean to enjoy it. Down
from thy horse, and have a stoup of cider, thou big rebel.'

'No rebel am I. My name is John Ridd. I belong to the side of the King:
and I want some breakfast.'

These fellows were truly hospitable; that much will I say for them.
Being accustomed to Arab ways, they could toss a grill, or fritter, or
the inner meaning of an egg, into any form they pleased, comely and
very good to eat; and it led me to think of Annie. So I made the rarest
breakfast any man might hope for, after all his troubles; and getting
on with these brown fellows better than could be expected, I craved
permission to light a pipe, if not disagreeable. Hearing this, they
roared at me, with a superior laughter, and asked me, whether or not,
I knew the tobacco-leaf from the chick-weed; and when I was forced to
answer no, not having gone into the subject, but being content with
anything brown, they clapped me on the back and swore they had never
seen any one like me. Upon the whole this pleased me much; for I do
not wish to be taken always as of the common pattern: and so we smoked
admirable tobacco--for they would not have any of mine, though very
courteous concerning it--and I was beginning to understand a little of
what they told me; when up came those confounded lambs, who had shown
more tail than head to me, in the linhay, as I mentioned.

Now these men upset everything. Having been among wrestlers so much as
my duty compelled me to be, and having learned the necessity of the rest
which follows the conflict, and the right of discussion which all people
have to pay their sixpence to enter; and how they obtrude this right,
and their wisdom, upon the man who has laboured, until he forgets all
the work he did, and begins to think that they did it; having some
knowledge of this sort of thing, and the flux of minds swimming in
liquor, I foresaw a brawl, as plainly as if it were Bear Street in
Barnstaple.

And a brawl there was, without any error, except of the men who hit
their friends, and those who defended their enemies. My partners in
breakfast and beer-can swore that I was no prisoner, but the best and
most loyal subject, and the finest-hearted fellow they had ever the luck
to meet with. Whereas the men from the linhay swore that I was a rebel
miscreant; and have me they would, with a rope's-end ready, in spite
of every [violent language] who had got drunk