"He dropped from the top gallery, I tell you--clean into the pit from the top gallery--and he weighs eighteen stone if an ounce. 'Your servant, Sir, and of all the Muses,' he says, picking himself up; and with that takes the hammer from my hand and plays Pyrrhus in Troy--Pyrrhus with all the ravening Danai behind him: for those hired scoundrels of mine took fire, and started ripping out the bowels of the poor old theatre as though it had been the Fleet and lodged all their cronies within! It went down before my eyes like a sand-castle before the tide. Within three hours they had wiped the earth of it. The Lord be praised that Philip Gosson had ne'er such an arm, nor could command such! Oh, but he's a portent! Troy's horse and Bankes's bay gelding together are a fool to him: he would harness them as Samson did the little foxes, and fire brushwood under their tails...." "Of a certainty you are drunk, Dick." "Drunk? I?" Burbage gripped the other's thin arm hysterically. "If you want to see a man drunk come to the gate. Nay, then, stay where you are: for there's no escaping him." Nor was there. Between them and the wagoners' lanterns at the gate a huge shadow thrust itself, the owner of it rolling like a ship in a sea-way, while he yet recited-- "_Strong be thy wallis that about thee standis_, (meaning the Clink, my son), _Wise be the people that within thee dwellis_, (which you may take for the inhabitants thereof), _Fresh is thy ryver with his lusty strandis, Blith be thy chirches, wele sowning be thy bellis._" "Well sounding is my belly, master, any way," put in a high, thin voice; "and it calls on a gentleman of Warwickshire to redeem his promise." "He shall, he shall, lad--in the fullness of time: 'but before dining ring at the bell,' says the proverb. Grope, lad, feel along the gate-posts if this yard, this courtlage, this base-court, hath any such thing as bell or knocker. _And when they came to mery Carleile All in the mornyng tyde-a, They found the gates shut them until About on every syde-a._ _Then Adam Bell bete on the gates With strokes great and stronge-a_ Step warely, lad. Plague of this forest! Have we brought timber to Sherwood? _With strokes great and stronge-a The porter marveiled who was thereat, And to the gates he thronge-a._ _They called the porter to counsell, And wrange his necke in two-a, And caste him in a depe dungeon, And took hys keys hym fro-a._ Within! You rascal, there, with the lantern!... Eh? but these be two gentlemen, it appears? I cry your mercy, Sirs." "For calling us rascals?" Nashe stepped forward. "'T hath been done to me before now, in print, upon as good evidence; and to my friend here by Act of Parliament." "But seeing you with a common stable-lantern----" "Yet Diogenes was a gentleman. Put it that, like him, I am searching for an honest man."