ollowed out beneath that no house could have been

drier. under this canopy of green two men were already squatted,

who waved their hands to alleyne that he should join them. as he

approached he saw that they had five dried herrings laid out in

front of them, with a great hunch of wheaten bread and a leathern

flask full of milk, but instead of setting to at their food they

appeared to have forgot all about it, and were disputing together

with flushed faces and angry gestures. it was easy to see by

their dress and manner that they were two of those wandering

students who formed about this time so enormous a multitude in

every country in europe. the one was long and thin, with

melancholy features, while the other was fat and sleek, with a

loud voice and the air of a man who is not to be gainsaid.

"come hither, good youth," he cried, "come hither! vultus

ingenui puer. heed not the face of my good coz here. foenum

habet in cornu, as dan horace has it; but i warrant him harmless

for all that."

"stint your bull's bellowing!" exclaimed the other. "if it come

to horace, i have a line in my mind: loquaces si sapiat---- how

doth it run? the english o't being that a man of sense should

ever avoid a great talker. that being so, if all were men of

sense then thou wouldst be a lonesome man, coz."

"alas! dicon, i fear that your logic is as bad as your

philosophy or your divinity--and god wot it would be hard to say

a worse word than that for it. for, hark ye: granting, propter

argumentum, that i am a talker, then the true reasoning runs that

since all men of sense should avoid me, and thou hast not avoided

me, but art at the present moment eating herrings with me under a

holly-bush, ergo you are no man of sense, which is exactly what i

have been dinning into your long ears ever since i first clapped

eyes on your sunken chops."

"tut, tut!" cried the other. "your tongue goes like the clapper

of a mill-wheel. sit down here, friend, and partake of this

herring. understand first, however, that there are certain

conditions attached to it."

"i had hoped," said alleyne, falling into the humor of the twain,

"that a tranchoir of bread and a draught of milk might be

attached to it."

"hark to him, hark to him!" cried the little fat man. "it is

even thus, dicon! wit, lad, is a catching thing, like the itch

or the sweating sickness. i exude it round me; it is an aura. i

tell you, coz, that no man can come within seventeen feet of me

without catching a spark. look at your own case. a duller man

never stepped, and yet within the week you have said three things

which might pass, and one thing the day we left fordingbridge

which i should not have been ashamed of myself."

"enough, rattle-pate, enough!" said the other. "the milk you

shall have and the bread also, friend, together with the herring,

but you must hold the scales between us."

"if he hold the herring he holds the scales, my sapient brother,"

cried the fat man. "but i pray you, good youth, to tell us

whether you are a learned clerk, and, if so, whether you have

studied at oxenford or at paris."

"i have some small stock of learning," alleyne answered, picking

at his herring, "but i have been at neither of these places. i

was bred amongst the cistercian monks at beaulieu abbey."

"pooh, pooh!" they cried both together. "what sort of an

upbringing is that?"

"non cuivis contingit adire corinthum," quoth alleyne.

"come, brother stephen, he hath some tincture of letters," said

the melancholy man more hopefully. "he may be the better judge,

since he hath no call to side with either of us. now, attention,

friend, and let your ears work as well as your nether jaw. judex

damnatur--you know the old saw. here am i upholding the good

fame of the learned duns scotus against the foolish quibblings

and poor silly reasonings of willie ockham."

"while i," quoth the other loudly, "do maintain the good sense

and extraordinary wisdom of that most learned william against the

crack-brained fantasies of the muddy scotchman, who hath hid such

little wit as he has under so vast a pile of words, that it is

like one drop of gascony in a firkin of ditch-water. solomon his

wisdom would not suffice to say what the rogue means."

"certes, stephen hapgood, his wisdom doth not suffice," cried the

other. "it is as though a mole cried out against the morning

star, because he could not see it. but our dispute, friend, is

concerning the nature of that subtle essence which we call

thought. for i hold with the learned scotus that thought is in

very truth a thing, even as vapor or fumes, or many other

substances which our gross bodily eyes are blind to. for, look

you, that which produces a thing must be itself a thing, and if a

man's thought may produce a written book, then must thought

it