BUT.  Ay so, suckling, so; stir not now:  if the peering rogues chance to go over you, yet stir not:  younger brothers call you them, and have no more forecast, I am ashamed of you.  These are such whose fathers had need leave them money, even to make them ready withal; for, by these hilts, they have not wit to button their sleeves without teaching:  close, squat, close.  Now if the lot of hanging do fall to my share, so; then the old father’s[400] man drops for his young masters.  If it chance, it chances; and when it chances, heaven and the sheriff send me a good rope!  I would not go up the ladder twice for anything:  in the meantime preventions, honest preventions do well, off with my skin; so; you on the ground, and I to this tree, to escape the gallows.
          
                                          [Ascends a tree.]

WITHIN.  Follow, follow, follow!

BUT.  Do:  follow.  If I do not deceive you, I’ll bid a pox of this wit, and hang with a good grace.

Enter SIR JOHN HARCOP, with two or three others with him.

HAR.  Up to this wood they took:  search near, my friends, I am this morn robbed of three hundred pound.

BUT.  I am sorry there was not four to make even money.  Now, by the devil’s horns, ’tis Sir John Harcop.

HAR.  Leave not a bush unbeat nor tree unsearch’d;
As sure as I was robb’d, the thieves went this way.

BUT.  There’s nobody, I perceive, but may lie at some time, for one of them climbed this way.

1ST MAN.  Stand, I hear a voice; and here’s an owl in an ivy-bush.

BUT.  You lie, ’tis an old servingman in a nut-tree.

2D MAN.  Sirrah, sir, what make you in that tree?

BUT.  Gathering of nuts, that such fools as you are may crack the shells, and I eat the kernels.

HAR.  What fellow’s that?

BUT.  Sir John Harcop, my noble knight; I am glad of your good health; you bear your age fair, you keep a good house, I have fed at your board, and been drunk in your buttery.

HAR.  But sirrah, sirrah, what made you in that tree?  My man and I, at foot of yonder hill, Were by three knaves robb’d of three hundred pound.

BUT.  A shrewd loss, by’r Lady, sir; but your good worship may now see the fruit of being miserable:  you will ride but with one man to save horse-meat and man’s meat at your inn at night, and lose three hundred pound in a morning.

HAR.  Sirrah, I say I have lost three hundred pound.

BUT.  And I say, sir, I wish all miserable knights might be served so; for had you kept half a dozen tall fellows, as a man of your coat should do, they would have helped now to keep your money.

HAR.  But tell me, sir, why lurked you in that tree?

BUT.  Marry, I will tell you, sir.  Coming to the top of the hill where you (right worshipful) were robbed at the bottom, and seeing some a-scuffling together, my mind straight gave me there were knaves abroad:  now, sir, I knowing myself to be old, tough, and unwieldy, not being able to do as I would, as much as to say rescue you (right worshipful)—­I, like an honest man, one of the king’s liege people, and a good subject—­