How to procure this
desirable source of intelligence was a question that was hourly becoming
more difficult to solve.
Slow and melancholy was their return, while with fear and hesitation
they communicated the result.
"Now, shame befall thee, Adam of Wills!" said a stout woman, to one of
the speakers; "thou wert ever a tough fighter; and the cudgel and ragged
staff were as glib in thine hands as a beggar's pouch on alms-days. Show
thy mettle, man. I'll spice thee a jug of barley-drink, an' thou be for
the bout this time."
"Nay," returned Adam, "I 'll fight Beelzebub if he be aught I can hit;
but these same boggarts, they say, a blow falls on 'em like rain-drops
on a mist, or like beating the wind with a corn-flail. I cannot fight
with naught, as it were."
"Shame on thee, Hal!" said a shrill-tongued, crooked little body,
arrayed in a coarse grey hood, and holding a stick, like unto a
one-handed crutch, of enormous dimensions. "Shame on thee! I would watch
myself, but the night-wind sits indifferently on my stomach, and I am
too old now for these moonshine lifts."
She cast her little bleared eyes, half-shut and distilling contempt, on
the cowardly bystanders.
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