But with money a-plenty thus coming so easily into his hands,—­money for dicing, for luxuries, for all his wild sports, money for Cicely, money for keeps, money to play chuckie-stones with if he chose,—­there was no bridle to Gaston Carew’s wild career.  His boon companions were spendthrifts and gamesters, dissolute fellows, of whom the least said soonest mended; and with them he was brawling early and late, very often all night long.  And though money came in fast, he wasted it faster, so that matters went from bad to worse.  Duns came spying about his door, and bailiffs hunted after him around the town with unpaid tradesmen’s bills.  Yet still he laughed and clapped his hand upon his poniard in the old bold way.

September faded away in wistful haze along the Hampstead hills.  The Admiral’s men came riding back with keen October ringing at their heels, and all the stalls were full of red-cheeked apples striped with emerald and gold.  November followed, with its nipping frost, and all St. George’s merry green fields turned brown and purple-gray.  The old year was waning fast.

The Queen’s Day was but a poor holiday, in spite of the shut-up shops; for it was grown so cold with sleet and rain that it was hard to get about, the gutters and streets being very foul, and the by-lanes impassable.  And now the children of Paul’s gave no more plays in the yard of the Mitre Inn, but sang in their own warm hall; for winter was at hand.

There came black nights when an ugly wind moaned in the shivering chimneys and howled across the peaked roofs, nights when there was no playing at the Rose, but it was hearty to be by the fire.  Then sometimes Carew sat at home all evening long, with Cicely upon his knee, and told strange tales of lands across the sea, where he had traveled when he was young, and where none spoke English but chance travelers, and even the loudest shouting could not serve to make the people understand.

While he spun these wondrous yarns Nick would curl up on the hearth and blow the crackling fire, sometimes staring at the master-player’s stories, sometimes laughing to himself at the funny faces carved upon the sides of the chubby Dutch bellows, and sometimes neither laughing nor listening, but thinking silently of home.  Then Carew, looking at him there, would quickly turn his face away and tell another tale.

But oftener the master-player stayed all night at the Falcon Inn with Dick Jones, Tom Hearne, Humphrey Jeffs, and other reckless roysterers, dicing and flipping shillings at shovel-board until his finger-nails were sore.  Then Nick would read aloud to Cicely out of the “Hundred Merry Tales,” or pop old riddles at her puzzled head until she, laughing, cried, “Enough!” But most of all he liked the story of brave Guy of Warwick, and would tell it again and again, with other legends of Arden Wood, till bedtime came.

In the gray of the morning Carew would come home, unshaven and leaden-eyed, with his bandy-legged varlet trotting like a watch-dog at his heels; and then, if the gaming had gone well, he was a lord, an earl, a duke, at least, so merry and so sprightly would he be withal; but if the dice had fallen wrong, he would by turns be raving mad or sodden as a sunken pie.