Neither spoke much until they had walked almost a mile's distance away from the town and were out in the open country. Here the snow seemed to be falling thicker and the wind to be blowing almost a gale.
"Methinks thou hadst best have kept thy cloak to thyself, Master Gilbert," remarked Timothy at length, as he passed under the friendly shelter of a thick hedge, "for it had been of far greater use to thee than to the old man you so generously gave it to. Here are we exposed to the bitterness of this storm, while he, I will warrant me, is already at home before a goodly fire, or else carousing with his boon companions in some comfortable tavern parlour."
Gilbert walked on a few paces in silence.
"It matters little to me whether the cloak hath been of use to the poor fellow or not," he presently said. "I saw him tremble with the cold, and could not think of him going half-clothed while I had a garment to spare. And when one thinks on't, Tim, 'tis surely a hard matter for a seaman who hath spent half a lifetime in tropic countries to come home here to England in the very depth of winter."
"Pooh!" objected Timothy. "But 'tis said that an Englishman can endure any climate in the world and suffer no ill from it. What of Sir Martin Frobisher and his crews, who voyaged far up into the frozen regions of the Arctic, where, 'tis said, there be whole mountains of ice, and where even the salt seas be frozen over for a full half of the year? I will engage that Sir Martin and his men met not such kindly gentlemen up in those parts to give them warm cloaks withal. And as for this old man Hartop, I'd be in nowise astonished to-morrow if I heard that he had sold your cloak to a pawnbroker and spent the money in strong liquors, or else thrown it away in the dice-box. You cannot persuade me, Master Gilbert, that a man who hath been for a score of years in foreign lands could come home so poor as this man, if he had not squandered all his gains in wanton idleness."
"Misfortune doth ofttimes come even to those who are righteous," remarked Gilbert Oglander in a sober voice as he shook the wet snow from the front of his doublet and hitched his sword anew under his arm, "and I will not believe that the man who could devoutly thank God, as Hartop did, for having brought him safely home, could be aught but an honest man at heart."