-foot with the news to Will's."

He gathered his cloak about him, and was gone.

"Ye've lost," said the man who was dicing with Carew.

Nick stepped down from the tap-room door. His ears were tingling with
the sound: "I'm off hot-foot with the news to Will's."

"Hot-foot with the news to Will's"?

To "Will's"? "Will" who?

The man was a player, by his air.

Nick hurriedly looked around. Carew's wild eyes were frozen upon the
dice. The bandy-legged man was drinking at a table near the door. The
crimson ribbon in his ear looked like a patch of blood.

He saw Nick looking at him, and made a horrible face. He would have
sworn likewise, but there was half a quart of ale in his can; so he
turned it up and drank instead. It was a long, long drink, and half his
face was buried in the pot.

When he put it down the boy was gone.

CHAPTER XXXI

IN THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE

In a garden near the old bear-yard, among tall rose-trees which would
soon be in bloom, a merry company of men were sitting around a table
which stood in the angle of a quick-set hedge beside a path graveled
with white stones and bordered with mussel-shells.

There was a house hard by with creamy-white walls, green-shuttered
windows, and a red-tiled roof. The door of the house was open, showing a
little ruddy fire upon a great hearth, kindled to drive away the damp;
and in the windows facing the garden there were lights shining warmly
out among the rose-trees.

The table was spread with a red damask cloth, on which were a tray of
raisins and nuts and a small rally of silver cups. Above the table an
apple-tree nodded its new leaves, and from an overhanging bough a
lantern hung glowing like a great yellow bee.

There was a young fellow with a white apron and a jolly little whisper
of a whistle on his puckered lips going around with a plate of cakes and
a tray of honey-bowls; and the men were eating and drinking and
chatting together so gaily, and seemed to be all such good friends, that
it was a pleasant thing just to see them sitting there in their
comfortable leather-bottomed chairs, taking life easily because the
spring had come again.

One tall fellow was smoking a pipe. He held the bowl in one hand, and
kept tamping down the loose tobacco with his forefinger. Now and again
he would be so eagerly talking he would forget that his finger was in
the bowl, and it would be burned. He would take it out with a look of
quaint surprise, wher