For, look you, neighbour Lugleather, it
is not for decent householders like ourselves to be brawling with the
godless grooms and pert pages of the nobles, that are bred up to
little else save bloodshed and blasphemy."
"For all that, neighbour," said Lugleather, "I would have curried that
youngster as properly as ever I curried a lamb's hide, had not the
hilt of my bilbo been for the instant beyond my grasp; and before I
could turn my girdle, gone was my master!"
"Ay," said the others, "the devil go with him, and peace abide with
us--I give my rede, neighbours, that we pay the lawing, and be
stepping homeward, like brother and brother; for old Saint Giles's is
tolling curfew, and the street grows dangerous at night."
With that the good burghers adjusted their cloaks, and prepared for
their departure, while he that seemed the briskest of the three,
laying his hand on his Andrea Ferrara, observed, "that they that spoke
in the praise of the Pope on the High-gate of Edinburgh, had best
bring the sword of Saint Peter to defend them."
While the ill-humour excited by the insolence of the young aristocrat
was thus evaporating in empty menace, Roland Graeme had to control the
far more serious indignation of Adam Woodcock. "Why, man, it was but a
switch across the mazzard--blow your nose, dry your eyes, and you will
see all the better for it."
"By this light, which I cannot see," said Adam Woodcock, "thou hast
been a false friend to me, young man--neither taking up my rightful
quarrel, nor letting me fight it out myself.
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