Page:The Pennyles Pilgrimage.djvu/35

 lodging, I was fain to wade over the river of Annan in Scotland, from which river the county of Annandale, hath its name. And whilst I waded on foot, my man was mounted on horseback, like the George without the Dragon. But the next morning, I arose and left Moffat behind me, and that day I travelled twenty-one miles to a sorry village called Blythe, but I was blithe myself to come to any place of harbour or succour, for since I was born, I never was so weary, or so near being dead with extreme travel: I was foundered and refoundered of all four, and for my better comfort, I came so late, that I must lodge without doors all night, or else in a poor house where the good wife lay in child-bed, her husband being from home, her own servant maid being her nurse. A creature naturally compacted, and artificially adorned with an incomparable homeliness: but as things were I must either take or leave, and necessity made me enter, where we got eggs and ale by measure and by tail. At last to bed I went, my man lying on the floor by me, where in the night there were pigeons did very bountifully mute in his face: the day being no sooner come, and having but fifteen miles to Edinburgh, mounted upon my ten toes, and began first to hobble, and after to amble, and so being warm, I fell to pace by degrees; all the way passing through a fertile country for corn and cattle: and about two of the clock in the