"Ay, these chattering travelers have stuffed your head full of thieves and assassins; they have not got a real live robber in their whole nation. Nay, I'll carry the beast; bear you, though, my cross-bow." "We will carry it by turns, then," said Gerard, "for 'tis a heavy load; poor thing, how its blood drips. Why did we slay it?" "For supper and the reward the baillie of the next town shall give us." "And for that it must die, when it had but just begun to live; and perchance it hath a mother that will miss it sore this night, and loves it as ours love us; more than mine does me." "What, know you not that his mother was caught in a pitfall last month, and her skin is now at the tanner's? and his father was stuck full of clothyard shafts t'other day, and died like Julius Cæsar, with his hands folded on his bosom, and a dead dog in each of them?" But Gerard would not view it jestingly. "Why, then," said he, "we have killed one of God's creatures that was all alone in the world--as I am this day, in this strange land." "You young milksop," roared Denys, "these things must not be looked at so, or not another bow would be drawn nor quarrel fly in the forest nor battlefield. Why, one of your kidney consorting with a troop of pike-men should turn them to a row of milk pails; it is ended; to Rome thou goest not alone; for never wouldst thou reach the Alps in a whole skin. I take thee to Remiremont, my native place, and there I marry thee to my young sister. She is blooming as a peach. Thou shakest thy head? Ah! I forgot; thou lovest elsewhere, and art a one-woman man, a creature to me scarce conceivable. Well, then, I shall find thee, not a wife, nor a leman, but a friend; some honest Burgundian who shall go with thee as far as Lyons; and much I doubt that honest fellow will be myself, into whose liquor thou hast dropped sundry powders to make me love thee; for erst I endured not doves in doublet and hose. From Lyons, I say, I can trust thee by ship to Italy, which being by all accounts the very stronghold of milksops, thou wilt there be safe; they will hear thy words, and make thee their duke in a twinkling." Gerard sighed. "In sooth I love not to think of this Dusseldorf, where we are to part company, good friend." They walked silently, each thinking of the separation at hand; the thought checked trifling conversation, and at these moments it is a relief to do something, however insignificant. Gerard asked Denys to lend him a bolt. "I have often shot with a long-bow, but never with one of these." "Draw thy knife and cut this one out of the cub," said Denys slyly. "Nay, nay, I want a clean one." Denys gave him three out of his quiver.