an othe or two), to throw Mallerie out at the window. Here Etna smoked,
daggers were a-drawing ... but the goodman lamented the case for the
slaunder, that a quarrel should be in his house, ... so ... the matter
was ended for this fitte."

But a certain Master Richard Drake, attending on my Lord of Leicester,
took pains first to warn Hall to take heed of Mallerie at play, and then
to tell Mallerie that Hall said he used "lewde practices at cards." The
next day at "Poules"[126] came Mallerie to Hall and "charged him very
hotly, that he had reported him to be a cousiner of folkes at Mawe."
Hall, far from showing that fury which he described as his
characteristic, denied the charge with meekness. He said he was patient
because he was bound to keep the peace for dark disturbances in the
past. Mallerie said it was because he was a coward.

Mallerie continued to say so for months, until before a crowd of
gentlemen at the "ordinary" of one Wormes, his taunts were so unbearable
that Hall crept up behind him and tried to stab him in the back. There
was a general scuffle, some one held down Hall, the house grew full in a
moment with Lord Zouche, gentlemen, and others, while "Mallerie with a
great shreke ranne with all speede out of the doores, up a paire of
stayres, and there aloft used most harde wordes againste Mr Hall."

Hall, who had cut himself--and nobody else--nursed his wound indoors for
some days, during which time friends brought word that Mallerie would
"shewe him an Italian tricke, intending thereby to do him some secret
and unlooked for mischief." Then, with "a mufle half over his face,"
Hall took post-horses to his home in Lincolnshire. Business called him,
he tells the reader. There was no ground whatever for Mallerie to say he
fled in disguise.