Nick wondered if it did.  His own father could neither read nor write, while he could do both and had some Latin, too.  At the thought of the Latin he made a wry face.

“Joe Carter be-eth in the stocks,” said Roger, peering through the jeering crowd about the pillory and post; “a broke Tom Samson’s pate wi’ ’s ale-can yestreen.”

[Illustration:  “‘Whur be-est going, Nick?’ Asked Roger Dawson.”]

But Nick pushed on.  A few ruddy-faced farmers and drovers from the Bed Horse Vale still lingered at the Boar Inn door and by the tap-room of the Crown; and in the middle of the street a crowd of salters, butchers, and dealers in hides, with tallow-smeared doublets and doubtful hose, were squabbling loudly about the prices set upon their wares.

In the midst of them Nick saw his father, and scurried away into Back Bridge street as fast as he could, feeling very near a sneak, but far from altering his purpose.

“Job Hortop,” said Simon Attwood to his apprentice at his side, looking out suddenly over the crowd, “was that my Nick yonder?”

“Nay, master, could na been,” said Job, stolidly; “Nick be-eth in school by now—­the clock ha’ struck.  ’Twas Dawson’s Hodge and some like ne’er-do-well.”

CHAPTER V

IN THE WARWICK ROAD

The land was full of morning sounds as the lads trudged along the Warwick road together.  An ax rang somewhere deep in the woods of Arden; cart-wheels ruttled on the stony road; a blackbird whistled shrilly in the hedge, and they heard the deep-tongued belling of hounds far off in Fulbroke park.

Now and then a heron, rising from the river, trailed its long legs across the sky, or a kingfisher sparkled in his own splash.  Once a lonely fisherman down by the Avon started a wild duck from the sedge, and away it went pattering up-stream with frightened wings and red feet running along the water.  And then a river-rat plumped into the stream beneath the willows, and left a long string of bubbles behind him.

Nick’s ill humor soon wore off as he breathed the fresh air, moist from lush meadows, and sweet from hedges pink and white with hawthorn bloom.  The thought of being pent up on such a day grew more and more unbearable, and a blithe sense of freedom from all restraint blunted the prick of conscience.

“Why art going to Coventry, Nick?” inquired Roger suddenly, startled by a thought coming into his wits like a child by a bat in the room.

“To see the stage-play that the burgesses would na allow in Stratford.”

“Wull I see, too?”

“If thou hast eyes—­the Mayor’s show is free.”

“Oh, feckins, wun’t it be fine?” gaped Hodge.  “Be it a tailors’ show, Nick, wi’ Herod the King, and a rope for to hang Judas?  An’ wull they set the world afire wi’ a torch, an’ make the earth quake fearful wi’ a barrel full o’ stones?  Or wull it be Sin in a motley gown a-thumping the Black Man over the pate wi’ a bladder full o’ peasen—­an’ angels wi’ silver wingses, an’ saints wi’ goolden hair?  Or wull it be a giant nine yards high, clad in the beards o’ murdered kings, like granny saith she used to see?”