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CHAPTER VII.
HOW THE THREE COMRADES JOURNEYED THROUGH THE WOODLANDS.
At early dawn the country inn was all alive, for it was rare
indeed that an hour of daylight would be wasted at a time when
lighting was so scarce and dear. Indeed, early as it was when
Dame Eliza began to stir, it seemed that others could be earlier
still, for the door was ajar, and the learned student of
Cambridge had taken himself off, with a mind which was too intent
upon the high things of antiquity to stoop to consider the
four-pence which he owed for bed and board. It was the shrill
out-cry of the landlady when she found her loss, and the clucking
of the hens, which had streamed in through the open door, that
first broke in upon the slumbers of the tired wayfarers.
Once afoot, it was not long before the company began to disperse.
A sleek mule with red trappings was brought round from some
neighboring shed for the physician, and he ambled away with much
dignity upon his road to Southampton. The tooth-drawer and the
gleeman called for a cup of small ale apiece, and started off
together for Ringwood fair, the old jongleur looking very yellow
in the eye and swollen in the face after his overnight potations.
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