"I will do more than that, lad," he answered. Swaying to and fro my cup, which he had seized in his grasp, he laid his hand on the window-ledge beside me, as though to steady himself, and stooped until his coarse, puffy face was but a few inches from mine. "More than that," he whispered hoarsely; and his eyes, peering into mine, were now sober and full of meaning. "If you do not want to be put in the stocks or worse, make tracks! Make tracks, lad!" he continued. "Your friend over there--he is a niggardly oaf--has sent for the hundredman and the constable, and you are the quarry. So the word is, Go! That," he added aloud, standing erect again, with a drunken smile, "is for your cup of ale; and good coin too!" For half a minute I sat quite still; taken aback, and wondering, while the bacon cooled on the plate before me, what I was to do. I did not doubt the monk was telling the truth. Why should he lie to me? And I cursed my folly in trusting to a coward's honor or a serving-man's good faith. But lamentations were useless. What was I to do? I had no horse, and no means of getting one. I was in a strange country, and to try to escape on foot from pursuers who knew the roads, and had the law on their side, would be a hopeless undertaking. Yet to be haled back to Coton End a prisoner--I could not face that. Mechanically I raised a morsel of bacon to my lips, and as I did so, a thought occurred to me--an idea suggested by some talk I had heard the evening before at Towcester. Fanciful as the plan was, I snatched at it; and knowing each instant to be precious, took my courage in my hand--and my tankard. "Here," I cried, speaking suddenly and loudly, "here is bad luck to purveyors, Master Host!" There were a couple of stablemen within hearing, lounging in the doorway, besides the landlord and his wife and the farmers. A villager or two also had dropped in, and there were two peddlers lying half asleep in the corner. All these pricked up their ears more or less at my words. But, like most country folk, they were slow to take in anything new or unexpected; and I had to drink afresh and say again, "Here is bad luck to purveyors!" before any one took it up. Then the landlord showed he understood. "Ay, so say I!" he cried, with an oath. "Purveyors, indeed! It is such as they give the Queen a bad name." "God bless her!" quoth the monk loyally. "And drown the purveyors!" a farmer exclaimed. "They were here a year ago, and left us as bare as a shorn sheep," struck in a strapping villager, speaking at a white heat, but telling me no news; for this was what I had heard at Towcester the night before. "The Queen should lie warm if she uses all the wool they took! And the pack-horses they purveyed to carry off the plunder--why, the packmen avoid Stratford ever since as though we had the Black Death! Oh, down with the purveyors, say I! The first that comes this way I will show the bottom of the Ouse. Ay, that I will, though I hang for it!"