he went back into the house again the painted cloths upon the wall
seemed dingier than ever compared with the clean, bright world outside.
The sky-blue coat of the Prodigal Son was brown with the winter's smoke;
the Red Sea towered above Pharaoh's ill-starred host like an inky
mountain; and the homely maxims on the next breadth--"Do no Wrong,"
"Beware of Sloth," "Overcome Pride," and "Keep an Eye on the
Pence"--could scarcely be read.

Nick jumped up on the three-legged stool and began to take them down.
The nails were crooked and jammed in the wall, and the last came out
with an unexpected jerk. Losing his balance, Nick caught at the
table-board which leaned against the wall; but the stool capsized, and
he came down on the floor with such a flap of tapestry that the ashes
flew out all over the room.

He sat up dazed, and rubbed his elbows, then looked around and began to
laugh.

He could hear heavy footsteps overhead. A door opened, and his father's
voice called sternly from the head of the stair: "What madcap folly art
thou up to now?"

"I be up to no folly at all," said Nick, "but down, sir. I fell from the
stool. There is no harm done."

"Then be about thy business," said Attwood, coming slowly down the
stairs.

He was a gaunt man, smelling of leather and untanned hides. His short
iron-gray hair grew low down upon his forehead, and his hooked nose,
grim wide mouth, and heavy under jaw gave him a look at once forbidding
and severe. His doublet of serge and his fustian hose were stained with
liquor from the vats, and his eyes were heavy with sleep.

The smile faded from Nick's face. "Shall I throw the rushes into the
street, sir?" "Nay; take them to the muck-hill. The burgesses ha' made
a great to-do about folk throwing trash into the highways. Soul and body
o' man!" he growled, "a man must ask if he may breathe. And good hides
going a-begging, too!"

Nick hurried away, for he dreaded his father's sullen moods.

The swine were squealing in their styes, the cattle bawled about the
straw-thatched barns in Chapel lane, and long files of gabbling ducks
waddled hurriedly down to the river through the primroses under the
hedge. He could hear the milkmaids calling in the meadows; and when he
trundled slowly home the smoke was creeping up in pale-blue threads from
the draught-holes in the wall.

The tanner's house stood a little back from the thoroughfare, in that
part of Stratford-on-Avon where the south end o