t the
jeweled folk in fine array casting their jokes and gibes down at the
trammel, he had laughed, too, as honest as any. But when the time came
for the water pageant, Dad had given him a lift up and a boost to the
branches of a tree. And he had heard what she said, the lady upon whom
he had from the first fixed his young gaze, the dark lady, with the
jewels in her dusky hair, breathing lure and beauty and glamour. As he
straddled the limb of his high perch that brought him so near her, he
heard her cry out, her head thrown backward on her proud young throat:
"Ah, the little beast, bringing the breath of the rabble up to our
nostrils."

And it was something like to what burned in young Will Shakespeare's
soul then that Dad was feeling now. Will, big boy that he was, laid a
hand on Dad's hand. Father looked up; their eyes met.

Dad threw an arm about his shoulder and drew him close--father and son.

Something passed from the older to the younger. The boy squared his
shoulders. The man in Will Shakespeare was born.

How best could he help Dad? So the lad pondered, meanwhile digging the
sense piecemeal out of his _Ovid_ for the morrow's lesson.

"_It is the mind that makes the man, and our
strength--measure--vigor_"--any one of the three words would do--"_our
measure is in our immortal souls_."

Why--why is there truth in books? Had Ovid lived and been a man, a man
who knew and fought it out himself?

Will Shakespeare caught sight of a great and glorious kingdom he had not
visioned before. The schoolmaster hitherto had talked in riddles.

XIII

Yet a year after this Will Shakespeare, just awakened to a love of
letters, threw his books down. Mother's brown hair, as she leaned over
her new child, Edmund, showed lines of gray. Dad, the day's trade over,
sat brooding at home, and scarce would hie him forth, the fear of
process for debt hanging over him.

Tall sturdy Will Shakespeare could buy up cattle and trade for hides as
well as the butcher's son in Rother Market. Will Shakespeare threw down
his books and went forth into the world--a man.

[Illustration: "Tall, sturdy Will Shakespeare could buy up cattle ... as
well as the butcher's son"]

A man? A man, yes; once his stripling days of hot blood are over, days
of rustic rout, of fight and wrestle, of deer-stealing, of wanderings
with strolling players; a man, husband to Ann Hathaway, father of
children, son of Mary Arden of the Asbies, Gentlewoman--o