He gripped Nick’s shoulder as they rode, and glared into his eyes as if to sear them with his own.  Nick heard his poniard grating in its sheath, and shut his eyes so that he might not see the master-player’s horrid stare; for the opening and shutting, opening and shutting, of the blue lids made him shudder.

“And what’s more,” said Carew, sternly, “I shall call thee Master Skylark from this time forth—­dost hear?  And when I bid thee go, thou’lt go; and when I bid thee come, thou’lt come; and when I say, ’Here, follow me!’ thou’lt follow like a dog to heel!” He drew up his lip until his white teeth showed, and Nick, hearing them gritting together, shrank back dismayed.

“There!” laughed Carew, scornfully.  “He that knows better how to tame a vixen or to cozen a pack of gulls, now let him speak!” and said no more until they passed by Chipping Barnet.  Then, “Nick,” said he, in a quiet, kindly tone, as if they had been friends for years, “this is the place where Warwick fell”; and pointed down the field.  “There in the corner of that croft they piled the noble dead like corn upon a threshing-floor.  Since then,” said he, with quiet irony, “men have stopped making English kings as the Dutch make dolls, of a stick and a poll thereon.”

Pleased with hearing his own voice, he would have gone on with many another thing; but seeing that Nick listened not at all to what he said, he ceased, and rode on silently or chatting with the others.

The country through Middlesex was in most part flat, and heavy forests overhung the road from time to time.  There the players slipped their poniards, and rode with rapier in hand; for many a dark deed and cruel robbery had been done along this stretch of Watling street.  And as they passed, more than one dark-visaged rogue with branded hand and a price upon his head peered at them from the copses by the way.

In places where the woods crept very near they pressed closer together and rode rapidly; and the horse-boy and the grooms lit up the matches of their pistolets, and laid their harquebuses ready in rest, and blew the creeping sparkle snapping red at every turn; not so much really fearing an attack upon so stout a party of reckless, dashing blades, as being overawed by the great, mysterious silence of the forest, the semi-twilight all about, and the cold, strange-smelling wind that fanned their faces.

The wild spattering of hoofs in water-pools that lay unsucked by the sun in shadowy stretches, the grim silence of the riders, and the wary eying of each covert as they passed, sent a thrill of excitement into Nick’s heart too keen for any boy to resist.