Brownsover. And who knoweth but that, years after thy death, the
very house wherein thou wert born may be pointed at, and commented
on, by knots of people, gentle and simple! What a shame for an
honest man's son! Thanks to me, who consider of measures to prevent
it! Posterity shall laud and glorify me for plucking thee clean out
of her head, and for picking up timely a ticklish skittle, that
might overthrow with it a power of others just as light. I will rid
the hundred of thee, with God's blessing!--nay, the whole shire. We
will have none such in our county; we justices are agreed upon it,
and we will keep our word now and forevermore. Woe betide any that
resembles thee in any part of him!"

Whereunto Sir Silas added, -

"We will dog him, and worry him, and haunt him, and bedevil him; and
if ever he hear a comfortable word, it shall be in a language very
different from his own."

"As different as thine is from a Christian's," said the youth.

"Boy! thou art slow of apprehension," said Sir Thomas, with much
gravity; and taking up the cue, did rejoin, -

"Master Silas would impress upon thy ductile and tender mind the
danger of evil doing; that we, in other words that justice is
resolved to follow him up, even beyond his country, where he shall
hear nothing better than the Italian or the Spanish, or the black
language, or the language of Turk or Troubadour, or Tartar or
Mongol. And, forsooth, for this gentle and indirect reproof, a
gentleman in priest's orders is told by a stripling that he lacketh