Tho. As to that, we might make shift.  I have a little, though not much; but I tell you there is no stirring on the road.  I know a couple of poor honest men in our street have attempted to travel; and at Barnet,[186] or Whetstone, or thereabout, the people offered to fire at them if they pretended to go forward:  so they are come back again quite discouraged.

John. I would have ventured their fire, if I had been there.  If I had been denied food for my money, they should have seen me take it before their faces; and, if I had tendered money for it, they could not have taken any course with me by the law.

Tho. You talk your old soldier’s language, as if you were in the Low Countries[187] now; but this is a serious thing.  The people have good reason to keep anybody off that they are not satisfied are sound at such a time as this, and we must not plunder them.

John. No, brother, you mistake the case, and mistake me too:  I would plunder nobody.  But for any town upon the road to deny me leave to pass through the town in the open highway, and deny me provisions for my money, is to say the town has a right to starve me to death; which cannot be true.

     Tho. But they do not deny you liberty to go back again from
     whence you came, and therefore they do not starve you.

John. But the next town behind me will, by the same rule, deny me leave to go back; and so they do starve me between them.  Besides, there is no law to prohibit my traveling wherever I will on the road.

     Tho. But there will be so much difficulty in disputing with them
     at every town on the road, that it is not for poor men to do it, or
     undertake it, at such a time as this is especially.

John. Why, brother, our condition, at this rate, is worse than anybody’s else; for we can neither go away nor stay here.  I am of the same mind with the lepers of Samaria.[188] If we stay here, we are sure to die.  I mean especially as you and I are situated, without a dwelling house of our own, and without lodging in anybody’s else.  There is no lying in the street at such a time as this; we had as good[189] go into the dead cart at once.  Therefore, I say, if we stay here, we are sure to die; and if we go away, we can but die.  I am resolved to be gone.

Tho. You will go away.  Whither will you go, and what can you do?  I would as willingly go away as you, if I knew whither; but we have no acquaintance, no friends.  Here we were born, and here we must die.

John. Look you, Tom, the whole kingdom is my native country as well as this town.  You may as well say I must not go out of my house if it is on fire, as that I must not go out of the town I was born in when it is infected with the plague.  I was born in England, and have a right to live in it if I can.

     Tho. But you know every vagrant person may, by the laws of
     England, be taken up, and passed back to their last legal
     settlement.