ht, because his heart was dancing so.

In the morning, when the world began to stir outside, and the early
light came in at the window, he slipped out of bed across the floor, and
threw the casement wide. Over the river, and over the town, and over the
hills that lay blue in the north, was Stratford!

The damp, cool air from the garden below seemed a primrose whiff from
the lane behind his father's house. He could hear the cocks crowing in
Surrey, and the lowing of the kine. There was a robin singing in a bush
under the window, and there was some one in the garden with a pair of
pruning-shears. Snip-snip! snip-snip! he heard them going. The light in
the east was pink as a peach-bloom and too intense to bear.

"Good-morrow, Master Early-bird!" a merry voice called up to him, and a
nosegay dropped on the window-ledge at his side. He looked down. There
in the path among the rose-trees was Master Will Shakspere, laughing. He
had on an ancient leathern jacket and a hat with a hole in its crown;
and the skirts of the jacket were dripping with dew from the bushes.

"Good-morrow, sir," said Nick, and bowed. "It is a lovely day."

"Most beautiful indeed! How comes the sun?"

"Just up, sir; the river is afire with it now. O-oh!" Nick held his
breath, and watched the light creep down the wall, darting long bars of
rosy gold through the snowy bloom of the apple-trees, until it rested
upon Master Shakspere's face, and made a fleeting glory there.

Then Master Shakspere stretched himself a little in the sun, laughing
softly, and said, "It is the sweetest music in the world--morning,
spring, and God's dear sunshine; it starteth kindness brewing in the
heart, like sap in a withered bud. What sayest, lad? We'll fetch the
little maid to-day; and then--away for Stratford town!"

* * * * *

But when Master Shakspere and Nicholas Attwood came to Gaston Carew's
house, the constables had taken charge, the servants were scattering
hither and thither, and Cicely Carew was gone.

The bandy-legged man, the butler said, had come on Sunday in great
haste, and packing up his goods, without a word of what had befallen his
master, had gone away, no one knew whither, and had taken Cicely with
him. Nor had they questioned what he did, for they all feared the rogue,
and judged him to have authority.

Nick caught a moment at the lintel of the door. The house was full of
voices, and the sound of trampling feet went