“Ye cannot miss the place, sir,” called the tapster after him. “’Tis just beyond Ned Alleyn’s, by the ditch.  Ye’ll never mistake the ditch, sir—­Billingsgate is roses to it.”

“Oh, I’ll find it fast enough,” the stranger answered; “but he should have sent to meet me, knowing I might come at any hour.  ’Tis a felon place for thieves; and I’ve not heart to skewer even a goose on such a night as this.”

At the sudden breaking of voices upon the silence, Carew looked up, with a quarrel ripe for picking in his eye.  But seeing who spoke, such a smile came rippling from the corners of his mouth across his dark, unhappy face that it was as if a lamp of welcome had been lighted there.  “What, Ben!” he cried; “thou here?  Why, bless thine heart, old gossip, ’tis good to see an honest face amid this pack of rogues.”

There was a surly muttering in the crowd.  Carew threw his head back haughtily and set his knuckles to his hip.  “A pack of rogues, I say,” he repeated sharply; “and a fig for the whole pack!” There was a certain wildness in his eyes.  No one stirred or made reply.

“Good!  Gaston,” laughed the stranger, with a shrug; “picking thy company still, I see, for quantity, and not for quality.  No, thank ’e; none of the tap for me.  My Lord Hunsdon was made chamberlain in his father’s stead to-day, and I’m off hot-foot with the news to Will’s.”

He gathered his cloak about him, and was gone.

“Ye’ve lost,” said the man who was dicing with Carew.

Nick stepped down from the tap-room door.  His ears were tingling with the sound:  “I’m off hot-foot with the news to Will’s.”

“Hot-foot with the news to Will’s”?

To “Will’s”?  “Will” who?

The man was a player, by his air.

Nick hurriedly looked around.  Carew’s wild eyes were frozen upon the dice.  The bandy-legged man was drinking at a table near the door.  The crimson ribbon in his ear looked like a patch of blood.

He saw Nick looking at him, and made a horrible face.  He would have sworn likewise, but there was half a quart of ale in his can; so he turned it up and drank instead.  It was a long, long drink, and half his face was buried in the pot.

When he put it down the boy was gone.

CHAPTER XXXI

IN THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE

In a garden near the old bear-yard, among tall rose-trees which would soon be in bloom, a merry company of men were sitting around a table which stood in the angle of a quick-set hedge beside a path graveled with white stones and bordered with mussel-shells.

There was a house hard by with creamy-white walls, green-shuttered windows, and a red-tiled roof.  The door of the house was open, showing a little ruddy fire upon a great hearth, kindled to drive away the damp; and in the windows facing the garden there were lights shining warmly out among the rose-trees.