“Stay! would Will Shakspere come?  Why, here, I’ll send him word.  He’ll come—­Will Shakspere never bore a grudge; and I shall so soon go where are no grudges, envy, storms, or noise, but silence and the soft lap of everlasting sleep.  He’ll come—­Nick, bid him come, upon his life, to the Old Bailey when I am taken up.”

Nick nodded.  It was strange to have his master beg.

Carew was looking up at a thin streak of light that came in through the narrow window at the stair.  “Nick,” said he, huskily, “last night I dreamed I heard thee singing; but ’twas where there was a sweet, green field and a stream flowing through a little wood.  Methought ’twas on the road past Warwick toward Coventry.  Thou’lt go there some day and remember Gaston Carew, wilt not, lad?  And, Nick, for thine own mother’s sake, do not altogether hate him; he was not so bad a man as he might easily have been.”

“Come,” growled the turnkey, who was pacing up and down like a surly bear; “have done.  ’Tis a fat shilling’s worth.”

“’Twas there I heard thee sing first, Nick,” said Carew, holding to the boy’s hands through the bars.  “I’ll never hear thee sing again.”

“Why, sir, I’ll sing for thee now,” said Nick, choking.

The turnkey was coming back when Nick began suddenly to sing.  He looked up, staring.  Such a thing dumfounded him.  He had never heard a song like that in Newgate.  There were rules in prison.  “Here, here,” he cried, “be still!” But Nick sang on.

The groaning, quarreling, and cursing were silent all at once.  The guard outside, who had been sharpening his pike upon the window-ledge, stopped the shrieking sound.  Silence like a restful sleep fell upon the weary place.  Through dark corridors and down the mildewed stairs the quaint old song went floating as a childhood memory into an old man’s dream; and to Gaston Carew’s ear it seemed as if the melody of earth had all been gathered in that little song—­all but the sound of the voice of his daughter Cicely.

It ceased, and yet a gentle murmur seemed to steal through the mouldy walls, of birds and flowers, sunlight and the open air, of once-loved mothers, and of long-forgotten homes.  The renegade had ceased his cursing, and was whispering a fragment of a Spanish prayer he had not heard for many a day.

Carew muttered to himself.  “And now old cares are locked in charmed sleep, and new griefs lose their bitterness, to hear thee sing—­to hear thee sing.  God bless thee, Nick!”

“‘Tis three good shillings’ worth o’ time,” the turnkey growled, and fumbled with the keys.  “All for one shilling, too,” said he, and kicked the door-post sulkily.  “But a plague, I say, a plague!  ’Tis no one’s business but mine.  I’ve a good two shillings’ worth in my ears.  ’Tis thirty year since I ha’ heard the like o’ that.  But what’s a gaol for?—­man’s delight?  Nay, nay.  Here, boy, time’s up!  Come out o’ that.”  But he spoke so low that he scarcely heard himself; and going to the end of the corridor, he marked at random upon the wall.