"Come, come," said he. "What do you here? Who bade you here, pray? Know you not this place is in the Company's keeping? Come, make off with you, rascal, or some of us will see you go keep your rogue of a master company." "Hold your peace, beadle," said I, "or you shall swing on the beam over your head. Here, Peter, get up." Peter rose, purple in face, and not very steady in the knees. "Now," said I, "tell me, where got you that ale?" "Indeed, Humphrey, I was invited to it. I never--" "Where got you that beef and bread?" "I--oh, dost thou think so ill of me as to suppose--" "That when your master is in gaol, and your mistress and her little ones are homeless, you would come here and gorge your vile paunch with the food that belongs to them? yes, I suppose every word of it, Peter Stoupe." "But," said he, "I have a right as a 'prentice--" "'Prentice!" shouted I, "you a 'prentice! a mean, chicken-livered, gluttonous sneak like you, a 'prentice! 'fore heaven, you do the craft honour! Come, bustle away with you, and God save my master from such dirty thieves as you." Here Timothy Ryder was foolish enough to laugh; which enraged me past all enduring. So, beadle and all as he was, I took him by the nape of his neck like a puppy, and flung him into the Strand, bidding him, as he valued his bones, not come within arm's length of me or my master's house till I asked him. As for Peter, he made off without my help; and here I was with the house to myself. Then I knew I was in a scrape beside which all the troubles of the past few weeks were as nothing. I had shamefully outraged the beadle of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, acting under the authority of his Grace the Bishop of London! Nothing I could say or do could undo that. Even if I fled now--which I was not in the humour of doing, since my blood was up--it was too late. For already a crowd was in the Strand, some led by curiosity and Peter's lamentations, others by Timothy's halloos; and before I knew where I stood, I was besieged. I had barely time to bolt the door and heap up reams of paper across the passage, before such a battering began as you never heard. I ran upstairs and surveyed the enemy from a window. There were half the men of the Watch there--they wanted me for assaulting a beadle. There were Timothy and a body of Company's men--they wanted me for defying the authority of the Master and Wardens. There were my old friends the Court bullies--they wanted me for the trouble that had happened in Finsbury Fields. There were a crowd of idle town-boys--they wanted their fling against a 'prentice. Take it altogether, I seemed to be in request. It was not much use hurling types at them from the window; there was nothing bigger than Brevier to give them, and that was too small to break any bones. Nor had I any other weapon. So I put out my head and shouted "Clubs! Clubs!" with all my voice, and then went down to be ready for the first man that should break in.