"Well, well; look to your affairs, then. But go early to-morrow."
Ravenshaw pondered a few moments. "I will start at noon, not before."
"But you must be at the Grange by four o'clock; I have given my word to the people there."
"I can do so, setting forth at noon. 'Tis eighteen miles, you say. I will go by horse."
"No, but you will give me one--or the means to buy one at Smithfield; and then may I die in Newgate if I be not at your country-house at four o'clock!"
After a little thought, Jerningham told him to call at a certain gate at Winchester House on the morrow at noon, where a horse would be in waiting; he then handed him a gold angel and dismissed him to his affairs.
The captain had no sooner strutted jauntily off than Jerningham quickly beckoned Gregory, and said earnestly:
"Dog his footsteps. Lose not his track till he comes to me to-morrow; and if he meets _her_--Begone! you will lose him. Haste!"
The jealous lackey, raised to sudden joy by this congenial commission, glided away like a cat.
"I will have her, 'gainst all the surly fathers and swaggering captains in London; and 'gainst her own will, and fiends and angels, to boot!" said Master Jerningham, in his heart.
About the same moment, Ravenshaw was saying in _his_ heart, as he trod the stones of Fleet Street:
"Ere I leave London, I'll see her safe from the old man's hopes and the young man's devices. I'll pawn my brains, else!"
"Rather than be yoked with this bridegroom is appointed me I would take up any husband almost upon any trust."--_Bartholomew Fair._
Ravenshaw found Master Holyday leaning back against a door-post, with the unconscious weariness of hunger, and listening with a mild interest to the oration of a quack doctor who had drawn a small crowd.
"Come, heart," cried the captain, "the mountebank will never cure thy empty stomach; here's the remedy for that," and he showed his gold piece, and dragged the scholar to an ordinary. After dinner, they bought paper, ink, and pens, and took a lodging at the house of a horse-courser in Smithfield,--a top-story room, with an open view of the horse markets backed by gabled buildings and the tower of St. Bartholomew's Church.
Ravenshaw left the poet at work upon his puppet-play, of which the title was to be: "The Tragical Comical History of Paris and Helen; otherwise the King a Cuckold; being the Sweet Sinful Loves of the Trojan Gallant and the Fair Queen of Menelaus; with the Mad, Merry Humours of the Foul-mouthed Roaring Greek Soldier, Thersites."