compassion of my great miserie, or remembrance of the pittiful death of
his slaine Master: and contemning my age and infirmity, thinketh that I
am unable to revenge his mischiefs, moreover he would perswade me, that
he were not culpable. Indeed, it is a convenient thing to looke and
plead for safety, when as the conscience doeth confesse the offence, as
theeves and malefactors accustome to do. But O good Lord, thou cursed
beast, if thou couldest utter the contents of thine owne mind, whom
(though it were the veriest foole in all the world) mightest thou
perswade that this murther was voide or without thy fault, when as it
lay in thy power, either to keepe off the theeves with thy heeles, or
else to bite and teare them with thy teeth? Couldest not thou (that so
often in his life time diddest spurne and kicke him) defend him now at
the point of death by the like meane? Yet at least, thou shouldest have
taken him upon thy backe, and so brought him from the cruell hands of
the theeves: where contrary thou runnest away alone, forsaking thy good
Master, thy pastor and conductor. Knowest thou not, that such as denie
their wholsome help and aid to them which lie in danger of death, ought
to be punished, because they have offended against good manners, and
the law naturall? But I promise thee, thou shalt not long rejoyce at my
harmes, thou shalt feele the smart of thy homicide and offence, I will
see what I can doe. And therewithall she unclosed her apron, and bound
all my feete together, to the end I might not help my selfe, then she
tooke a great barre, which accustomed to bar the stable doore, and never
ceased beating me till she was so weary that the bar fell out of her
hands, whereupon she (complaining of the soone faintnesse of her armes)
ran to her fire and brought a firebrand and thrust it under my taile,
burning me continually, till such time as (having but one remedy) I
arayed her face and eies with my durty dunge, whereby (what with the
stinke thereof, and what with the filthinesse that fell in her eies) she
was welnigh blinded: so I enforced the queane to leave off, otherwise I
had died as Meleager did by the sticke, which his mad mother Althea cast
into the fire.

THE EIGHTH BOOKE

THE THIRTY-SECOND CHAPTER

How a young man came and declared the miserable death of Lepolemus and
his wife Charites.

About midnight came a young man, which seemed to be one of the family
of the good woman Charites, wh