They had been playing for an hour, and the game had gone beyond all reason.  The other players had put aside the dice to watch the two, and the nook in which their table stood was ringed with curious faces.  A lantern had been hung above, but Carew had had it taken down, as its bottom made a shadow on the board.  Carew’s face was red and white by turns; but the face of the other had no more color than candle-wax.

At the end of the arbor some one was strumming upon a gittern.  It was strung in a different key from that in which the men were singing, and the jangle made Nick feel all puckered up inside.  By and by the playing ceased, and the singers came to the end of their song.  In the brief hush the sharp rattle of the dice sounded like the patter of cold hail against the shutter in the lull of a winter storm.

Then there came a great shouting outside, and, looking through the arbor, Nick saw two couriers on galloway nags come galloping over the bowling-green to the arbor-side, calling for ale.  They drank it in their saddles, while their panting horses sniffed at the fresh young grass.  Then they galloped on.  Through the vines, as he looked after them, Nick could see the towers of London glittering strangely in the moonlight.  It was nearly high tide, and up from the river came the sound of women’s voices and laughter, with the pulse-like throb of oars and the hoarse calling of the watermen.

In the great room of the inn behind him the gallants were taking their snuff in little silver ladles, and talking of princesses they had met, and of whose coach they had ridden home in last from tennis at my lord’s.  Some were eating, some were drinking, and some were puffing at long clay pipes, while others, by twos, locked arm in arm, went swaggering up and down the room, with a huge talking of foreign lands which they had never so much as seen.

“A murrain on the luck!” cried Carew, suddenly.  “Can I throw nothing but threes and fours?”

A muffled stir ran round.  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.  “Don’t get the mubble-fubbles, Carew:  there’s nought the matter with the dice.”

A man came down from the tap-room door.  Nick stepped aside to let him pass.  He was a player, by his air.

He wore a riding-cloak of Holland cloth, neither so good nor so bad as a riding-cloak might be, but under it a handsome jerkin overlaid with lace, and belted with a buff girdle in which was a light Spanish rapier.  His boots were russet cordovan, mid-thigh tall, and the rowels of his clinking spurs were silver stars.  He was large of frame, and his curly hair was short and brown; so was his pointed beard.  His eyes were singularly bright and fearless, and bluff self-satisfaction marked his stride; but his under lip was petulant, and he flicked his boot with his riding-whip as he shouldered his way along.