and a saucy face. I know one of his subjects who could match him
at that. If he cannot speak like an Englishman I trow that he
can fight like an Englishman, and he was hammering at the gates
of Paris while ale-house topers were grutching and grumbling at
home."

This loud speech, coming from a man of so formidable an
appearance, somewhat daunted the disloyal party, and they fell
into a sullen silence, which enabled Alleyne to hear something of
the talk which was going on in the further corner between the
physician, the tooth-drawer and the gleeman.

"A raw rat," the man of drugs was saying, "that is what it is
ever my use to order for the plague--a raw rat with its paunch
cut open."

"Might it not be broiled, most learned sir?" asked the tooth-drawer.
"A raw rat sounds a most sorry and cheerless dish."

"Not to be eaten," cried the physician, in high disdain. "Why
should any man eat such a thing?"

"Why indeed?" asked the gleeman, taking a long drain at his
tankard.

"It is to be placed on the sore or swelling. For the rat, mark
you, being a foul-living creature, hath a natural drawing or
affinity for all foul things, so that the noxious humors pass
from the man into the unclean beast."