MACDUFF
180 Be not a niggard of your speech. How goes't?
ROSS
When I came hither to transport the tidings
182 Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumor 183 Of many worthy fellows that were out, 184 Which was to my belief witnessed the rather For that I saw the tyrant's power afoot.
Now is the time of help. Your eye in Scotland
Would create soldiers, make our women fight
To doff their dire distresses.
MALCOLM Be't their comfort
We are coming thither. Gracious England hath
190 Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men, An older and a better soldier none
That Christendom gives out.
ROSS Would I could answer
This comfort with the like. But I have words
That would be howled out in the desert air,
195 Where hearing should not latch them.
MACDUFF What concern they,
The general cause or is it a fee-grief196
Due to some single breast?
ROSS No mind that's honest
But in it shares some woe, though the main part
Pertains to you alone.
MACDUFF If it be mine,
Keep it not from me; quickly let me have it.200
ROSS
Let not your ears despise my tongue forever,
Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound
That ever yet they heard.
MACDUFF Hmm-I guess at it.
ROSS