g out at daybreak, had been--what Gammer
said--a witch, weaving overnight her spell about poor Margery? He knew
how it would have been; he had heard whispers about these things before;
the dying embers on the hearth, the little waxen figure laid to melt
thereon, the witch-woman weaving the charm about--now swifter, faster
circling--with passes of hands above.

[Illustration: "Will clambered up on the settle to think it all over"]

Little Will Shakespeare, terrified at his own imaginings, clutched
himself, afraid to move. Is that only a shadow yonder in the corner, now
creeping toward him, now stealing away?

What is that at the pane? Is it the frozen twigs of the old pippin, or
the tapping fingers of some night creature without?

Will Shakespeare falls off the settle in his haste and scuttles to
Mother. Once there, he hopes she does not guess why he hangs to her so
closely. But he is glad, nevertheless, when the candles are brought in.

II

But these things all vanish from mind when the outer door opens and Dad
comes in stamping and blowing. Dad is late, but men are always late. It
is expected that they should come in late and laugh at the women who
chide and remind them that candles cost and that it makes the maid testy
to be kept waiting.

Men should laugh loud like Dad, and catch Mother under the chin and kiss
her once, twice, three times. Will means to be just such a man when he
grows up, and to fill the room with his big shoulders and bigger laugh
as Dad is doing now while tossing Brother Gilbert. He, little Will, he
will never be one like Goodman Sadler, Gammer's son-in-law, with a lean,
long nose, and a body slipping flatlike through a crack of the door.

And here Dad bends to tweak the ear of Will who would laugh noisily if
it hurt twice as badly. It makes him feel himself a man to wink back
those tears of pain.

[Illustration: "Dad bends to tweak the ear of Will"]

"A busy afternoon this, Mary," says Dad. "Old Timothy Quinn from out
Welcombe way was in haggling over a dozen hides to sell. Then Burbage
was over from Coventry about that matter of the players, and kept me so
that I had to send Bardolph out with your Cousin Lambert to Wilmcote to
mark that timber for felling."

Now for all Master Shakespeare's big, off-hand mentioning thus of facts,
this was meant for a confession.

Mary Shakespeare had risen to take the crowing Gilbert, handed back to
her by her husband, and with the other ha