The intelligence seemed more startling and less gratifying than Stephen had expected. Sir John demanded whether they were poor, and declared that he had better have heard of them when his purse was fuller. He had supposed that his wife had given him up and found a fresh mate, and when he heard of her death, he made an exclamation which might be pity, but had in it something of relief. He showed more interest about his old father; but as to his daughter, if she had been a lad now, a’ might have been a stout comrade by this time, ready to do the Badger credit. Yea, his poor Kate was a good lass, but she was only a Flemish woman and hadn’t the sense to rear aught but a whining little wench, who was of no good except to turn fools’ heads, and she was wedded and past all that by this time. Stephen explained that she was wedded to one of the Lord Cardinal’s meiné. “Ho!” said the Condottiere, pausing, “be that the butcher’s boy that is pouring out his gold to buy scarlet hats, if not the three crowns. ’Tis no bad household wherein to have a footing. Saidst thou I should find my wench and the old Gaffer there?” Stephen had to explain, somewhat to the disappointment of the Captain, who had, as it appeared, in the company of three or four more adventurous spirits like himself, taken a passage in a vessel lying off Gravesend, and had only turned aside to take up his new armour and his deposit of passage-money. He demurred a little, he had little time to spare, and though, of course, he could take boat at the Temple Stairs, and drop down the river, he observed that it would have been a very different thing to go home to the old man when he first came back with a pouch full of ransoms and plunder, whereas now he had barely enough to carry him to the place of meeting with his Badgers. And there was the wench too—he had fairly forgotten her name. Women were like she wolves for greed when they had a brood of whelps. Stephen satisfied him that there was no danger on that score, and heard him muttering, that it was no harm to secure a safe harbour in case a man hadn’t the luck to be knocked on the head ere he grew too old to trail a pike. And he would fain see the old man. So permission was asked for Stephen to show the way to Master Randall’s, and granted somewhat reluctantly, Master Headley saying, “I’ll have thee back within an hour, Stephen Birkenholt, and look thou dost not let thy brain be set afire with this fellow’s windy talk of battles and sieges, and deeds only fit for pagans and wolves.” “Ay!” said Tibble, perhaps with a memory of the old fable, “better be the trusty mastiff than the wolf.”