might have
brought your father and mother into trouble--my sweet Moll who had done
her best for me. I deemed, as you do now, that the way to fortune was
open, but I found no path before me, and I had tightened my belt many a
time, and was not much more than a bag of bones, when, by chance, I fell
in with a company of tumblers and gleemen. I sang them the old hunting-
song, and they said I did it tunably, and, whereas they saw I could
already dance a hornpipe and turn a somersault passably well, the leader
of the troop, old Nat Fire-eater, took me on, and methinks he did not
repent--nor I neither--save when I sprained my foot and had time to lie
by and think. We had plenty to fill our bellies and put on our backs;
we had welcome wherever we went, and the groats and pennies rained into
our caps. I was Clown and Jack Pudding and whatever served their turn,
and the very name of Quipsome Hal drew crowds. Yea, 'twas a merry life!
Ay, I feel thee wince and shrink, my lad; and so should I have
shuddered when I was of thine age, and hoped to come to better things."

"Methinks 'twere better than this present," said Stephen rather gruffly.

"I had my reasons, boy," said Randall, speaking as if he were pleading
his cause with their father and mother rather than with two such young
lads. "There was in our company an old man-at-arms who played the lute
and the rebeck, and sang ballads so long as hand and voice served him,
and with him went his grandchild, a fair and honest little maiden, whom
he kept so jealously apart that 'twas long ere I knew of her following
the company. He had been a franklin on my Lord of Warwick's lands, and
had once been burnt out by Queen Margaret's men, and just as things
looked up again with him, King Edward's folk ruined all again, and slew
his two sons. When great folk play the fool, small folk pay the scot,
as I din into his Grace's ears whenever I may. A minion of the Duke of
Clarence got the steading, and poor old Martin Fulford was turned out to
shift as best he might. One son he had left, and with him he went to
the Low Countries, where they would have done well had they not been
bitten by faith in the fellow Perkin Warbeck. You've heard of him?"

"Yea," said Ambrose; "the same who was taken out of sanctuary at
Beaulieu, and borne off to London. Father said he was marvellous like
in the face to all the kings he had ever seen hunting in the Forest."

"I know not; but to the day of his