an but hold your tongue.
Can you?

FIFE.
I'd rather be at home again.

CLO.
Where you shall be the quicker if while here
You can keep silence.

FIFE.
I may whistle, then?
Which by the virtue of my name I do,
And also as a reasonable test
Of waking sanity--

CLO.
Well, whistle then;
And for another reason you forgot,
That while you whistle, you can chatter not.
Only remember--if you quit this pass--

FIFE.
(His rhymes are out, or he had call'd it spot)--

CLO.
A bullet brings you to.
I must forthwith to court to tell the King
The issue of this lamentable day,
That buries all his hope in night.
(To FIFE.)
Farewell. Remember.

FIFE.
But a moment--but a word!
When shall I see my mis--mas--

CLO.
Be content:
All in good time; and then, and not before,
Never to miss your master any more.
(Exit.)

FIFE.
Such talk of dreaming--dreaming--I begin
To doubt if I be dreaming I am Fife,
Who with a lad who call'd herself a boy
Because--I doubt there's some confusion here--
He wore no petticoat, came on a time
Riding from Muscovy on half a horse,
Who must have dreamt she was a horse entire,
To cant me off upon my hinder face
Under this tower, wall-eyed and musket-tongued,
With sentinels a-pacing up and down,
Crying All's well when all is far from well,
All the day long, and all the night, until
I dream--if what is dreaming be not waking--
Of bells a-tolling and processions rolling
With candles, crosses, banners, San-benitos,
Of which I wear the flamy-finingest,
Through streets and places throng'd with fiery faces
To some back platform--
Oh, I shall take a fire into my hand
With thinking of my own dear Muscovy--
Only just over that Sierra there,
By which we tumbled headlong into--No-land.
Now, if without a bullet after me,
I could but get a peep of my old home
Perhaps of my own mule to take me there--
All's still--perhaps the gentlemen within
Are dreaming it is night behind their masks--
God send 'em a good nightmare!--Now then--Hark!
Voices--and up the rocks--and armed men
Climbing like cats--Puss in the corner then.

(He hides.)

(Enter Soldiers cautiously up the rocks.)