ROSS. Well too. 

 MACDUFF. The tyrant has not batter’d at their peace? 

 ROSS. No; they were well at peace when I did leave ’em. 

 MACDUFF. Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes’t? 

 ROSS. When I came hither to transport the tidings, Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumour Of many worthy fellows that were out; Which was to my belief witness’d 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 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 howl’d out in the desert air, Where hearing should not latch them. 

 MACDUFF. What concern they? The general cause? or is it a fee-grief 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. 

 ROSS. Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever, Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound That ever yet they heard. 

 MACDUFF. Humh! I guess at it. 

 ROSS. Your castle is surpris’d; your wife and babes Savagely slaughter’d. To relate the manner Were, on the quarry of these murder’d deer, To add the death of you. 

 MALCOLM. Merciful heaven!— What, man! ne’er pull your hat upon your brows. Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break. 

 MACDUFF. My children too? 

 ROSS. Wife, children, servants, all That could be found. 

 MACDUFF. And I must be from thence! My wife kill’d too? 

 ROSS. I have said. 

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