Page:History of John Cheap the chapman (5).pdf/9

 concluding with theſe words, "Thou monſieur Diable, brother of Beelzebub god of Ekron, take this wife's kirn, butter and milk, ſap and ſubſtance, without and within, ſo that ſhe may die in miſery, as ſhe would have others to live."

The wife hearing the aforeſaid sentence, clapt her hands, and called out another old woman as fooliſh as herſelf, who came crying after us to come back, back we went, where ſhe made us eat heartily of butter and cheeſe; then ſhe earneſtly pleaded with me to go and lift my cautripscantrips [sic], which I did, upon her promiſing never to deny a hungry traveller meat nor drink, whether they had money to pay for't or not; and never to ſerve the poor with the old proverb, 'Go home to your own pariſh, 'but give them leſs or more as ye ſee them in need. This ſhe faithfully promiſed to do while ſhe lived, and with milk, we drank towards her cows good health and her own, not forgetting her huſband's and the bull's, as the one was goodman of the houſe, and the other of the byre; and away we came in all haſte, leſt ſome of a more underſtanding nature ſhould come to hear of it, and follow after us.

In a few days thereafter we came to an ale-houſe in a muir, far diſtant from any other, it being a ſore day of wind and rain, we could not travel, we was obliged to ſtay there, and the houſe being very throng, we could get no bed but the ſervant laſſes, which we wae to have for a penny-worth of pins and needles, and ſhe was to ly with her maſter and miſtreſs: but as we were going to bed, in comes three highland drovers on their way home from England; the landlord told them that the beds were all taken up but one, that two chapmen