“Eighty zecchins,” said Gurth, surprised
at the question.
“In this purse,” said Rebecca, “thou
wilt find a hundred. Restore to thy master that
which is his due, and enrich thyself with the remainder.
Haste—–begone—–stay
not to render thanks! and beware how you pass through
this crowded town, where thou mayst easily lose both
thy burden and thy life.—–Reuben,”
she added, clapping her hands together, “light
forth this stranger, and fail not to draw lock and
bar behind him.” Reuben, a dark-brow’d
and black-bearded Israelite, obeyed her summons, with
a torch in his hand; undid the outward door of the
house, and conducting Gurth across a paved court,
let him out through a wicket in the entrance-gate,
which he closed behind him with such bolts and chains
as would well have become that of a prison.
“By St Dunstan,” said Gurth, as he stumbled
up the dark avenue, “this is no Jewess, but
an angel from heaven! Ten zecchins from my brave
young master—–twenty from this pearl
of Zion—–Oh, happy day!—–Such
another, Gurth, will redeem thy bondage, and make
thee a brother as free of thy guild as the best.
And then do I lay down my swineherd’s horn and
staff, and take the freeman’s sword and buckler,
and follow my young master to the death, without hiding
either my face or my name.”
1st Outlaw: Stand, sir, and throw us that you
have about you; If not, we’ll make you sit,
and rifle you. Speed: Sir, we are undone!
these are the villains That all the travellers do
fear so much. Val: My friends,—–
1st Out: That’s not so, sir, we are your
enemies. 2d Out: Peace! we’ll hear him.
3d Out: Ay, by my beard, will we; For he’s
a proper man. Two Gentlemen of Verona
The nocturnal adventures of Gurth were not yet concluded;
indeed he himself became partly of that mind, when,
after passing one or two straggling houses which stood
in the outskirts of the village, he found himself
in a deep lane, running between two banks overgrown
with hazel and holly, while here and there a dwarf
oak flung its arms altogether across the path.
The lane was moreover much rutted and broken up by
the carriages which had recently transported articles
of various kinds to the tournament; and it was dark,
for the banks and bushes intercepted the light of
the harvest moon.
From the village were heard the distant sounds of
revelry, mixed occasionally with loud laughter, sometimes
broken by screams, and sometimes by wild strains of
distant music. All these sounds, intimating the
disorderly state of the town, crowded with military
nobles and their dissolute attendants, gave Gurth some
uneasiness. “The Jewess was right,”
he said to himself. “By heaven and St Dunstan,
I would I were safe at my journey’s end with
all this treasure! Here are such numbers, I will
not say of arrant thieves, but of errant knights and
errant squires, errant monks and errant minstrels,
errant jugglers and errant jesters, that a man with
a single merk would be in danger, much more a poor
swineherd with a whole bagful of zecchins. Would
I were out of the shade of these infernal bushes,
that I might at least see any of St Nicholas’s
clerks before they spring on my shoulders.”
