up and down from room to
room; but all he heard was Gaston Carew's worn voice saying, "Thou'lt
keep my Cicely from harm?"

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE BANDY-LEGGED MAN

Until night fell they sought the town over for a trace of Cicely; but
all to no avail. The second day likewise.

The third day passed, and still there were no tidings. Master
Shakspere's face grew very grave, and Nick's heart sickened till he
quite forgot that he was going home.

But on the morning of the fourth day, which chanced to be the 1st of
May, as he was standing in the door of a printer's stall in St. Paul's
Churchyard, watching the gaily dressed holiday crowds go up and down,
while Robin Dexter's apprentices bound white-thorn boughs about the
brazen serpent overhead, he spied the bandy-legged man among the rout
that passed the north gate by St. Martin's le Grand.

He had a yellow ribbon in his ear, and wore a bright plum-colored cloak,
at sight of which Nick cried aloud, for it was the very cloak which
Master Gaston Carew wore when he first met him in the Warwick road. The
rogue was making for the way which ran from Cheapside to the river, and
was walking very fast.

"Master Shakspere! Master Shakspere!" Nick called out. But Master
Shakspere was deep in the proofs of a newly published play, and did
not hear.

The yellow ribbon fluttered in the sun--was gone behind the churchyard
wall.

"Quick, Master Shakspere! quick!" Nick cried; but the master-writer
frowned at the inky page; for the light in the printer's shop was dim,
and the proof was very bad.

The ribbon was gone down the river-way--and with it the hope of finding
Cicely. Nick shot one look into the stall. Master Shakspere, deep in his
proofs, was deaf to the world outside. Nick ran to the gate at the top
of his speed. In the crowd afar off a yellow spot went fluttering like a
butterfly along a country road. Without a single second thought, he
followed it as fast as his legs could go.

Twice he lost it in the throng. But the yellow patch bobbed up again in
the sunlight far beyond, and led him on, and on, and on, a breathless
chase, down empty lanes and alley-ways, through unfrequented courts,
among the warehouses and wharf-sheds along the river-front, into the
kennels of Billingsgate, where the only sky was a ragged slit between
the leaning roofs. His heart sank low and lower as they went, for only
thieves and runagates who dared not face the day in honest streets were
ga