The men sat on either side a rustic table, a stoup of warm ale with a toast in it between them. The soldier, strong and thickset, was Captain Nicholas Blount, of the Earl of Sussex’s guard. The other, a dissipated, whimsical-looking young man, dressed in black, with a plain falling band, and on his head the scholar’s biretta with embracing flaps, was Master John Sparrow, ex-graduate of Trinity and clerk to the same nobleman. The former sprawled with his doublet unbuttoned, and his rapier and bonnet laid aside. He was an honest, downright soul, more of a Davus than an Œdipus, and yet with a naïve humorous side to him that ingratiated. In common with some soldiers of his rare time he had a tremendous respect for learning. “Jack Sparrow,” quoth he, “thou hast a damnable overplus of sophistication to answer a plain man withal. But I’ll have thee there. Is not theft an abstraction, and yet punishable by the law?” “Well countered, Captain,” said the clerk; “but I will prove it otherwise.” “How, sharp wit?” “Why, look you; by the token that a theft is an abstraction, an abstraction is a theft. But I say an abstraction is no theft, sith it steals nothing but time, which is itself an abstraction. Is a thief a thief, therefore, who steals from himself?” “Thou playest on the word, that hath another meaning.” “God save your neck if you’ll insist on ’t. One day you’ll be caught in a reverie and hanged for an abstraction. For me, one word one meaning is enough.” “What hanged--Nick hanged!” cried a voice, that of one of two gentlemen who at the moment came round the leafy angle of the bower. “What is his offence?” Blount and the young man rose to their feet, the one with a jocund, the second with a respectful manner of salutation. “Fair welcome, masters,” said the soldier. “Your wit shall save me a halter, or I’ll be hanged for it.”