, an you provoke us. We have a few
old scores to wipe off."

"Ay, marry! have we," cried an embroiderer's apprentice;
"these extortioners have ruined my master's trade by their
gold-and-silver-thread monopoly."

"Hundreds of worthy men have been thrown out of employment by their
practices," said a vintner's 'prentice. "We sell not half the wine we
used to do. And no wonder! seeing two-thirds of the inns in London are
shut up."

"The brewers will be all ruined," said a burly 'prentice, with a wooden
shovel over his shoulder; "since every day a fresh ale-house is closed;
and no new licences are granted. Murrain seize all such monopolists!
They are worse than the fly in hops, or smut in barley."

"Ay, plague take 'em!" exclaimed Dick Taverner. "They are as bad as the
locusts of Egypt. When they have devoured the substance of one set of
tradesfolk they will commence upon that of another. No one is safe from
them. It will be your turn next, Master Mercer. Yours after him, Master
Ironmonger, however hard of digestion may be your wares. You will come
third, Master Fishmonger. You fourth, Master Grocer. And when they are
surfeited with spiceries and fish, they will fall upon you, tooth and
nail, Master Goldsmith."

"I trow not," cried the apprentice last appealed to. "Our masters are
too rich and too powerful to submit to such usage."

"The very reason they will undergo it," replied Dick. "Their riches are
only a temptation to plunder. I repeat, no man is safe from these
extortioners. Since the law will not give us redress, and put them down,
we must take the law into our own hands. They shall have Club Law."

"Ay, ay--'Prentices' law--Club law!" chorussed the others.

"Sir Giles will make a Star-Chamber matter of it. He will have us up
before the Council," laughed the goldsmith's 'prentice.

"He will buy a monopoly of cudgels to deprive us of their use," cried a
bowyer.

"We will bestow that patent upon him gratis," quoth Dick, making his
staff whistle round his head.

"The prisoner!--gentlemen 'prentices--do not forget him!" cried Cyprien,
who, with two other serving-men and the cook, had joined the assailing
party. "Madame Bonaventure implores you to effect his rescue."

"And so we will, my jovial Gascon," replied Dick. "Come, Sir Giles! are
we to have the young gentleman from you by force or free-will?"

"You shall have him in neither way, sirrah," the knight rejoined. "You,
yourself, shall bear him company