There was Kemp, the stout tragedian; gray John Lowin, the walking-man; Diccon Burbage, and Cuthbert his brother, master-players and managers; Robin Armin, the humorsome jester; droll Dick Tarlton, the king of fools.  There was Blount, and Pope, and Hemynge, and Thomas Greene, and Joey Taylor, the acting-boy, deep in the heart of a honey-bowl, yet who one day was to play “Hamlet” as no man ever has played it since.  And there were others, whose names and doings have vanished with them; and beside these—­“What, merry hearts!” the big man cried, and clapped his neighbor on the back; “we’ll have a supper at the Mermaid Inn.  We’ll feast on reason, reason on the feast, toast the company with wit, and company the wit with toast—­why, pshaw, we are good fellows all!” He laughed, and they laughed with him. That was “rare Ben Jonson’s” way.

“There’s some one knocking, master,” said the boy.

A quick tap-tapping rattled on the wicket-gate.

“Who is it?” asked the quiet man.

“’Tis Edmund with the news,” cried one.

“I’ve dished him,” said Ben Jonson.

“’Tis Condell come to raise our wages,” said Robin Armin, with a grin.

“Thou’lt raise more hopes than wages, Rob,” said Tarlton, mockingly.

“It is a boy,” the waiter said, “who saith that he must see thee, master, on his life.”

The quiet man arose.

“Sit down, Will,” said Greene; “he’ll pick thy pocket with a doleful lie.”

“There’s nothing in it, Tom, to pick.”

“Then give him no more than half,” said Armin, soberly, “lest he squander it!”

“He saith he comes from Stratford town,” the boy went on.

“Then tell him to go back again,” said Master Ben Jonson; “we’ve sucked the sweet from Stratford town—­be off with his seedy dregs!”

“Go bring him in,” said the quiet man.

“Nay, Will, don’t have him in.  This makes the third within the month—­wilt father all the strays from Stratford town?  Here, Ned, give him this shilling, and tell him to be off to his cony-burrow as fast as his legs can trot.”

“We’ll see him first,” said the quiet man, stopping the other’s shilling with his hand.

“Oh, Willy-nilly!” the big man cried; “wilt be a kite to float all the draggle-tails that flutter down from Warwickshire?”

“Why, Ben,” replied the quiet man, “’tis not the kite that floats the tail, but the wind which floats both kite and tail.  Thank God, we’ve caught the rising wind; so, hey for draggle-tails!—­we’ll take up all we can.”

The waiter was coming up the path, and by his side, a little back, bareheaded and flushed with running, came Nicholas Attwood.  He had followed the big man through the fields from the gates of the Falcon Inn.

He stopped at the edge of the lantern’s glow and looked around uncertain, for the light was in his eyes.

“Come, boy, what is it?” asked Ben Jonson.