knew, nor did we greatly care, being made quite reckless by our
necessities. It was the next morning, when we met together at breakfast,
that our faces betrayed some compunctions; but these did not prevent us
eating prodigiously. "For," whispers Ned Herring, "if we are to be
hanged, it may as well be for a sheep as a lamb." However, Jack Dawson,
getting on the right side of the landlord, who seemed a very honest,
decent man for an innkeeper, agreed with him that we should give a
performance that night in a cart-shed very proper to our purpose, giving
him half of our taking in payment of our entertainment. This did Jack,
thinking from our late ill-luck we should get at the most a dozen people
in the sixpenny benches, and a score standing at twopence a head. But it
turned out, as the cunning landlord had foreseen, that our hanger was
packed close to the very door, in consequence of great numbers coming to
the town in the afternoon to see a bull baited, so that when Jack Dawson
closed the doors and came behind our scene to dress for his part, he
told us he had as good as five pounds in his pocket. With that to cheer
us we played our tragedy of "The Broken Heart" very merrily, and after
that, changing our dresses in a twinkling, Jack Dawson, disguised as a
wild man, and Moll as a wood nymph, came on to the stage to dance a
pastoral, whilst I, in the fashion of a satyr, stood on one side plying
the fiddle to their footing. Then, all being done, Jack thanks the
company for their indulgence, and bids 'em good-night.

And now, before all the company are yet out of the place, and while Jack
Dawson is wiping the sweat from his face, comes the landlord, and asks
pretty bluntly to be paid his share of our earnings.

"Well," says Jack, in a huff, "I see no reason for any such haste; but
if you will give me time to put on my breeches, you shall be paid all
the same." And therewith he takes down his trunks from the nail where