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Nick turned from the glare of the open door, and looked out into the moonlight. It seemed quite dark at first. The master-player's face was bitter white, and his fingers were tapping a queer staccato upon the table-top. "A plague on the bedlam dice!" said he. "I think they are bewitched." "Huff, ruff, and snuff!" the other replied.
Then many voices cried out together, "Sing it again! The Skylark the Skylark!" Nick looked up, startled. "Why, Master Carew," said he, with a tremble in his voice, "do they mean me ?" Carew put one hand beneath Nick's chin and turned his face up, smiling. The master-player's cheeks were flushed with triumph, and his dark eyes danced with pride. "Ay, Nicholas Skylark; 'tis thou they mean."
He gave a frightened cry, and ran past the green curtain, through the open door, and into the master-player's excited arms. "Quick, quick!" cried Carew. "Go back, go back! There, hark! dost not hear them call? Quick, out again they call thee back!" With that he thrust Nick through the door.
But when morning came, and he danced blithely back from washing himself at the horse-trough, all ready to start for home, he found the little roan cross-bridled as before between the master-player's gray and the bandy-legged fellow's sorrel mare. "What, there! cast him loose," said he to the horse-boy who held the three. "I am not going on with the players I'm to go back to Stratford."
Nick's cheeks flushed hotly, and his eyes fell; for they all stared curiously, first at him, and then at Carew standing up behind him, and several grinned mockingly and winked in a knowing way. He stole a look at Carew; but the master-player's face was frank and quite unmoved, so that Nick felt reassured.
"Father," said she, patting his cheek, "some one hath told him naughty things of thee. Come, daddy, say they are not so!" The master-player's face turned red as flame. He coughed and looked up among the roof-beams. "Why, of course they're not," said he, uneasily. "There, boy!" cried she; "I told thee so.
The lordly innkeeper came smirking and bobbing obsequiously about, with his freshest towel on his arm, and took the master-player's order as a dog would take a bone.
There was a flute, a viol, a gittern, a fiddle, and a drum; and behind the curtain, just outside the door, Nick could hear the master-player's low voice giving hasty orders to the others. So he said his lines all over to himself, and cleared his throat.
And a queer sense of uneasiness came creeping over him as he watched the master-player's eyes opening and shutting, opening and shutting, so that one moment he seemed to be staring and the next almost asleep; though all the while his keen, dark eyes peered out from between the lids like old dog-foxes from their holes, looking Nick over from head to foot, and from foot to head again, as if measuring him with an ellwand.
"Why, sir," said Nick, ruefully, "father will thresh me well this night." "Nay," said Carew, in a quite decided tone; "that he'll not, I promise thee!" and as he spoke he chuckled softly to himself. The man before them turned suddenly around and grinned queerly; but, catching the master-player's eye, whipped his head about like a weather-vane in a gale, and cantered on.
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