“Why, there would have been a piper paid—that’s all,” said Wildrake. “But wherefore come you this way now? I was about to seek you at the hut.” “I have been obliged to leave it—I will tell you the cause hereafter,” replied Markham. “What! the old play-hunting cavalier was cross, or Chloe was unkind?” “Jest not, Wildrake—it is all over with me,” said Everard. “The devil it is,” exclaimed Wildrake, “and you take it thus quietly!— Zounds! let us back together—I’ll plead your cause for you—I know how to tickle up an old knight and a pretty maiden—Let me alone for putting you _rectus in curia_, you canting rogue.—D—n me, Sir Henry Lee, says I, your nephew is a piece of a Puritan—it won’t deny—but I’ll uphold him a gentleman and a pretty fellow, for all that.—Madam, says I, you may think your cousin looks like a psalm-singing weaver, in that bare felt, and with that rascally brown cloak; that band, which looks like a baby’s clout, and those loose boots, which have a whole calf-skin in each of them,—but let him wear on the one side of his head a castor, with a plume befitting his quality; give him a good Toledo by his side, with a broidered belt and an inlaid hilt, instead of the ton of iron contained in that basket-hilted black Andrew Ferrara; put a few smart words in his mouth—and, blood and wounds! madam, says I—” “Prithee, truce with this nonsense, Wildrake,” said Everard, “and tell me if you are sober enough to hear a few words of sober reason?” “Pshaw! man, I did but crack a brace of quarts with yonder puritanic, roundheaded soldiers, up yonder at the town; and rat me but I passed myself for the best man of the party; twanged my nose, and turned up my eyes, as I took my can—Pah! the very wine tasted of hypocrisy. I think the rogue corporal smoked something at last—as for the common fellows, never stir, but _they_ asked me to say grace over another quart.” “This is just what I wished to speak with you about, Wildrake,” said Markham—“You hold me, I am sure, for your friend?” “True as steel.—Chums at College and at Lincoln’s Inn—we have been Nisus and Euryalus, Theseus and Pirithous, Orestes and Pylades; and, to sum up the whole with a puritanic touch, David and Jonathan, all in one breath. Not even politics, the wedge that rends families and friendships asunder, as iron rives oak, have been able to split us.” “True,” answered Markham: “and when you followed the King to Nottingham, and I enrolled under Essex, we swore, at our parting, that whichever side was victorious, he of us who adhered to it, should protect his less fortunate comrade.” “Surely, man, surely; and have you not protected me accordingly? Did you not save me from hanging? and am I not indebted to you for the bread I eat?”