How Tom served his Hostess, and a Tobacco Seller, being another of his Jests.

It happened that Tom was sent on an errand forty miles from his abode, over heaths and plains, where having dispatched his business, he chanced to be lodged in a room that opened into a yard, where his hostess kept many turkeys; which Tom seeing, he thrusts pins into two of their heads and in the night they died. The woman in the morning wondered how the fowls should come to die, Tom persuaded her that there was a great sickness where he dwelt amongst all manner of fowls, and wished his hostess to fling them away, the which she did. Tom watched where she flung them, and when he took his leave of his hostess, it was at such a time when she was busy setting bread into the oven, so that he was sure she could not look after him. So he goes and wraps the turkeys in his coat, and away he runs; but finding his two turkeys heavy, he sees a man that sold tobacco up and down the country, at the foot of a hill, when he alighted to lead his horse down the hill, at the bottom of which he falls down, and lies crying as if he had broke one of his legs, and makes to the man a most piteous lamentation; that he was six or seven miles from any town, there being no house near; and that he was like to perish for want of succour. The man asked, Where he dwelt? he said with a knight, to whom Tom did live as a jester. The man knowing the knight, and thinking Tom's leg had really been broken, with much ado lifted him upon the horse. Tom was mounted, he prayed the man to give him his master's turkeys. Tom made the horse to gallop away, crying out, I shall be killed! I shall be killed! O my leg! what shall I do! O my leg! The man seeing him gone stood in amaze, and knew not what to think; nevertheless, he durst not leave his turkeys behind him, for fear of displeasing the knight, but carried them lugging along fretting and swearing in his boots, till he came to the next town, where he hired a horse to overtake Tom, but could not, until he came to the knight's house, where Tom stood to attend his coming, looking out at the window. When the man alighted, Tom then called to him so loud, that most of the house heard him; O, said he, now I see thou art an honest man, I had thought you had set me upon your headstrong horse, on purpose to deceive me of my turkeys. The man replied, A pox take you and your turkeys, for I never was play'd the knave with so in my life; I hope that you will pay for the hire of the horse, which I was forced to borrow to follow you withal. That I will, said Tom, with all my heart.