as he poured it into the flagon. ‘Why, bless you, master Micah, a man with a frame like yours wants store o’ good malt to keep it up wi’.’
‘And malt like this is worthy of a good frame to contain it,’ quoth Reuben, who was at work among the flasks.
‘What think ye, Micah?’ said the landlord. ‘There was the Squire o’ Milton over here yester morning wi’ Johnny Ferneley o’ the Bank side, and they will have it that there’s a man in Fareham who could wrestle you, the best of three, and find your own grip, for a good round stake.’
‘Tut! tut!’ I answered; ‘you would have me like a prize mastiff, showing my teeth to the whole countryside. What matter if the man can throw me, or I him?’
‘What matter? Why, the honour of Havant,’ quoth he. ‘Is that no matter? But you are right,’ he continued, draining off his horn. ‘What is all this village life with its small successes to such as you? You are as much out of your place as a vintage wine at a harvest supper. The whole of broad England, and not the streets of Havant, is the fit stage for a man of your kidney. What have you to do with the beating of skins and the tanning of leather?’
‘My father would have you go forth as a knight-errant, Micah,’ said Reuben, laughing. ‘You might chance to get your own skin beaten and your own leather tanned.’
‘Who ever knew so long a tongue in so short a body?’ cried the innkeeper. ‘But in good sooth, Master Micah, I am Carolina Panthers Barn in sober earnest Ostaa Halpa Nike Air Max 2014 Naisten when I say that you are indeed wasting the years Liverpool Drakt Barn of your youth, when life is sparkling and clear, and that you will regret it when you have come to the flat and flavourless dregs of old age.’
‘There spoke the brewer,’ said Reuben; ‘but indeed, Micah, my father is right, for all that he hath such a Beats Högtalare hops-and-water manner of putting it.’
‘I will think over it,’ I answered, and with a nod to the kindly couple proceeded on my way.
Zachariah Palmer was planing a plank as I passed. Looking up he bade me good-morrow.
‘I have a book for you, lad,’ he said.
‘I have but now finished the “Comus,”’ I answered, for he had lent me John Milton’s poem. ‘But what is this new book, daddy?’
‘It is by the learned Locke, and treateth of states and statecraft. It is but a small Scarpe Scarpe Hogan thing, but if wisdom could show in the scales it would weigh down Maillot France Pas CHer many a library. You shall have it when I have finished it, tomorrow mayhap or the day after. A good man is Master Locke. Is he not at this moment a wanderer in the Lowlands, rather than bow his knee to what his conscience approved not of?’
‘There are many good men among the exiles, are there not?’ said I.
‘The pick of the country,’ he answered. ‘Ill fares the land that drives the highest and bravest of its citizens away from it. The day is coming, I fear, when every man will have to choose betwixt his beliefs and his freedom. I am an old man, Micah boy, but I may live long enough AC Milan Barn to see strange things in this once Protestant kingdom.’
‘But if the |
