--"

Will Shakespeare slips to his place on the stool.

Hamnet is next to him, Hamnet Sadler who is eight, almost a man grown.
Hamnet's cheeks are red and hard and shining, and he stands square and
looks you in the face. Hamnet has a fist, too, and has thrashed the
butcher's son down by the Rother Market, though the butcher's son is
nine.

Here Hamnet nudges Will. What is this he is saying? About Gammer, his
very own grandame?

"Ben't no witches," mutters Hamnet to Will. "Schoolmaster says so. Says
the like of Gammer's talk is naught but women's tales."

Whereupon Gammer pauses and turns her puckered eyes down upon the two
urchins at her knee. Has she heard what her grandson said? Will
Shakespeare feels as guilty as if he had been the one to say it.

"Ay, but those are brave words, Hammie," says Gammer, and she wags her
sharp chin knowingly; "brave words. An' you shall take the bowl yonder
and fetch a round o' pippins from the cellar for us here. Candle? La,
you know the way full well. The dusk is hardly fell. Nay, you're not
plucking Judith's sleeve, Hammie? You are not a lad to want a sister
at elbow? Go, now! What say you, Mistress Snelling? The tale? An' Willy
Shakespeare here, all eyes and open mouth for it, too? Ay, but he's the
rascalliest sweet younker for the tale. An' where were we? Ay, the fat
woman of Brentford had just come to Goodman Gosling's house----

[Illustration: "'Ay, but those are brave words, Hammie,' says Gammer"]

"Come back an' shut the door behind you, Hammie; there's more than a nip
to these December gales. I' faith, how the lad drumbles, a clumsy
lob----

"As you say, the fat woman of Brentford, one Gossip Pratt by name, an' a
two yards round by common say she was, an' that beard showing on her
chin under her thrummed hat an' muffler, a man with score o' years to
beard need not be ashamed of--this same woman comes to Goodman
Gosling's, him as dwelt by the churchyard. But he, avised about her
dealings, sent her speedily away, most like not choosing his words, him
being of a jandered, queazy stomach, an' something given to tongue. For
an hour following her going, an' you'll believe me--an' I had it from
his wife's cousin a-come ten year this simple time when I visited my
sister's daughter Nan at Brentford--his hogs fell sick an' died to the
number o' twenty an' he helpless afore their bloating and swelling.

"Nor did it end there, for his children falling ill soon after--a
pretty d