d gave an incredulous hoot.

Nick's face flushed. To be crossed at home, to be birched at school, to
work all May-day in the tannery vats, and to be laughed at--it was
too much.

"Ye think that I will na? Well, I'll show ye! 'Tis only eight miles to
Warwick, and hardly more than that beyond--no walk at all; and Diccon
Haggard, my mother's cousin, lives in Coventry. So out upon your musty
Latin--English is good enough for me this day! There's bluebells blowing
in the dingles, and cuckoo-buds no end. And while ye are all grinding at
your old Aesop I shall be roaming over the hills wherever I please."

As he spoke he thought of the dark, wainscoted walls of the school-room
with their narrow little windows overhead, of the foul-smelling floors
of the tannery in Southam's lane, and his heart gave a great, rebellious
leap. "Ay," said he, exultantly, "I shall be out where the birds can
sing and the grass is green, and I shall see the stage-play, while ye
will be mewed up all day long in school, and have nothing but a beggarly
morris and a farthing May-pole on the morrow."

"Oh, no doubt, no doubt," said Hal Saddler, mockingly "We shall have
but bread and milk, and thou shalt have--a most glorious threshing from
thy father when thou comest home again!"

That was the last straw to Nick's unhappy heart.

"'Tis a threshing either way," said he, squaring his shoulders
doggedly. "Father will thresh me if I run away, and Master Brunswood
will thresh me if I don't. I'll not be birched four times a week for
merely tripping on a word, and have nothing to show for it but stripes.
If I must take a threshing, I'll have my good day's game out first."

"But wilt thou truly go to Coventry, Nick?" asked Robin Getley,
earnestly, for he liked Nick more than all the rest.

"Ay, truly, Robin--that I will"; and, turning, Nick walked swiftly away
toward the market-place, never looking back.

CHAPTER IV

OFF FOR COVENTRY

At the Bridge street crossing Nick paused irresolute. Around the public
pump a chattering throng of housewives were washing out their towels and
hanging them upon the market-cross to dry. Along the stalls in Middle
Row the grumbling shopmen were casting up their sales from tallies
chalked upon their window-ledges, or cuffing their tardy apprentices
with no light hand.

John Gibson's cart was hauling gravel from the pits in Henley street to
mend the causeway at the bridge, which had been badly washed by the late