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Dost hear?" He dashed the towel to the ground. "I bid thee hold thy tongue." Nick hid his face between his hands, and leaned against the rough stone wall, a naked, shivering, wretched little chap indeed. "Oh, mother, mother, mother!" he sobbed pitifully. A singular expression came over the master-player's face.
He gripped Nick's shoulder as they rode, and glared into his eyes as if to sear them with his own. Nick heard his poniard grating in its sheath, and shut his eyes so that he might not see the master-player's horrid stare; for the opening and shutting, opening and shutting, of the blue lids made him shudder.
I tell thee I know the road thou art to ride this day better than thou dost thyself; and I'll see to it that thou dost come without fail to the very place that thou art going. I will, upon my word, and on the remnant of mine honour!" But in spite of this assurance, and in spite of the master-player's ceaseless stream of gaiety and marvels, Nick became more and more uneasy.
Nick caught the master-player's arm as they rode along, almost crying for very joy: "Oh, that I will, sir and do my very best. And, oh, Master Carew, I ha' thought so ill o' thee! Forgive me, sir; I did na know thee well." Carew winced. Hastily throwing the rein to Nick, he left him to master his own array.
"Why, Nick," exclaimed Cicely, "how dreadful thou dost look!" and, frightened, she caught him by the hand. "Why, oh! what is it, Nick thou art not ill?" "It was Will Shakspere!" cried Nick, and sank into the bottom of the wherry with his head upon the master-player's knee. "Oh, Master Carew," he cried, "will ye never leave me go?" Carew laid his hand upon the boy's head, and patted it gently.
While he spun these wondrous yarns Nick would curl up on the hearth and blow the crackling fire, sometimes staring at the master-player's stories, sometimes laughing to himself at the funny faces carved upon the sides of the chubby Dutch bellows, and sometimes neither laughing nor listening, but thinking silently of home.
For the lad's patient perseverance at his work, his delight in singing, and the tone of longing threaded through his voice, crept into the master-player's heart in spite of him; and Nick's gentle ways with Cicely touched him more than all the rest: for if there was one thing in all the world that Gaston Carew truly loved, it was his daughter Cicely.
His heart was blithe as he reined his curveting palfrey by the master-player's side, and watched the sunlight dance and sparkle along the dashing line from dagger-hilts and jeweled clasps, and the mist-lank plumes curl crisp again in the warmth of the rising sun.
So he rode on bravely, filled with a sense of daring and the thrill of perils more remote than Master Carew's altogether too adjacent poniard, as well as with a sturdy determination to escape at the first opportunity, in spite of all the master-player's threats. Up Highgate Hill they rattled in a bracing northeast wind, the rugged country bowling back against the tumbled sky.
Out of a bewildered daze he came at last to realize this much: that the master-player's house was very tall and very dark, standing in a dismal, dirty street, and that it had a gloomy hallway full of shadows that crept and wavered along the wall in the dim light of the late afternoon.