I would have made it, John, but for bad luck lately. Put back
your bits of paper, lad; I will have no acknowledgment. John Ridd, no
nonsense with me!'

For I was ready to kiss his hand, to think that any man in London (the
meanest and most suspicious place, upon all God's earth) should trust me
with five pounds, without even a receipt for it! It overcame me so that
I sobbed; for, after all, though big in body, I am but a child at heart.
It was not the five pounds that moved me, but the way of giving it; and
after so much bitter talk, the great trust in my goodness.

CHAPTER XXVII

HOME AGAIN AT LAST

It was the beginning of wheat-harvest, when I came to Dunster town,
having walked all the way from London, and being somewhat footsore. For
though five pounds was enough to keep me in food and lodging upon the
road, and leave me many a shilling to give to far poorer travellers, it
would have been nothing for horse-hire, as I knew too well by the prices
Jeremy Stickles had paid upon our way to London. Now I never saw a
prettier town than Dunster looked that evening; for sooth to say, I had
almost lost all hope of reaching it that night, although the castle was
long in view. But being once there, my troubles were gone, at least as
regarded wayfaring; for mother's cousin, the worthy tanner (with whom we
had slept on the way to London), was in such indignation at the plight
in which I came back to him, afoot, and weary, and almost shoeless--not
to speak of upper things--that he swore then, by the mercy of God, that
if the schemes abrewing round him, against those bloody Papists, should
come to any head or shape, and show good chance of succeeding, he would
risk a thousand pounds, as though it were a penny.

I told him not to do it, because I had heard otherwise, but was not at
liberty to tell one-tenth of what I knew, and indeed had seen in London
town. But of this he took no heed, because I only nodded at him; and
he could not make it out. For it takes an old man, or at least a
middle-aged one, to nod and wink, with any power on the brains of other
men. However, I think I made him know that the bad state in which I came
to his town, and the great shame I had wrought for him among the folk
round the card-table at the Luttrell Arms, was not to be, even there,
attributed to King Charles the Second, nor even to his counsellors, but
to my own speed of travelling, which had beat post-horses. For being
much distraught in mi