ear"; so he was always at it.

Gaston Carew sat beyond, dicing with a silky rogue who had the coldest,
hardest face that Nick had ever seen. His eyes were black and beady as a
rat's, and were circled about by a myriad of little crowfoot lines; and
his hooked nose lay across his thin blue lips like a finger across a
slit in a dried pie. His long, slim hands were white as any woman's; and
his fingers slipped among the laces at his cuffs like a weasel in a
tangle-patch.

They had been playing for an hour, and the game had gone beyond all
reason. The other players had put aside the dice to watch the two, and
the nook in which their table stood was ringed with curious faces. A
lantern had been hung above, but Carew had had it taken down, as its
bottom made a shadow on the board. Carew's face was red and white by
turns; but the face of the other had no more color than candle-wax.

At the end of the arbor some one was strumming upon a gittern. It was
strung in a different key from that in which the men were singing, and
the jangle made Nick feel all puckered up inside. By and by the playing
ceased, and the singers came to the end of their song. In the brief hush
the sharp rattle of the dice sounded like the patter of cold hail
against the shutter in the lull of a winter storm.

Then there came a great shouting outside, and, looking through the
arbor, Nick saw two couriers on galloway nags come galloping over the
bowling-green to the arbor-side, calling for ale. They drank it in
their saddles, while their panting horses sniffed at the fresh young
grass. Then they galloped on. Through the vines, as he looked after
them, Nick could see the towers of London glittering strangely in the
moonlight. It was nearly high tide, and up from the river came the sound
of women's voices and laughter, with the pulse-like throb of oars and
the hoarse calling of the watermen.

In the great room of the inn behind him the gallants were taking their
snuff in little silver ladles, and talking of princesses they had met,
and of whose coach they had ridden home in last from tennis at my
lord's. Some were eating, some were drinking, and some were puffing at
long clay pipes, while others, by twos, locked arm in arm, went
swaggering up and down the room, with a huge talking of foreign lands
which they had never so much as seen.

"A murrain on the luck!" cried Carew, suddenly. "Can I throw nothing but
threes and fours?"

A muffled stir ran round. N