But suddenly he came to himself again with a sense of a great stillness fallen over everything—­no singing in the room below, and silence everywhere but in the court, where there was a trampling as of horses standing at the gate.  And while he was still lazily wondering, a great cheer broke out in the room below, and there was a stamping of feet like cattle galloping over a bridge; and then, all at once, the door opened into the hallway at the foot of the stair, and the sound burst out as fire bursts from the cock-loft window of a burning barn, and through the noise and over it Colley Warren’s voice calling him by name:  “Skylark!  Nick Skylark!  Ho there, Nick! where art thou?”

He sprang to the door and kicked the rushes away.  All the hall was full of voices, laughing, shouting, singing, and cheering.  There were footsteps coming up the stair.  “What there, Skylark!  Ho, boy!  Nick, where art thou?” he could hear Colley calling above them all.  Out he popped his nose:  “Here I am, Colley—­what’s to do? Whatever in the world!” and he ducked his head like a mandarin; for whizz—­flap! two books came whirling up the stair and thumped against the panel by his ears.

“The news—­the news, Nick!  Have ye heard the news?” the lads were shouting as if possessed.  “We’re going to court!  Hurrah, hurrah!” And some, with their arms about one another, went whirling out at the door and around the windy close like very madcaps, cutting such capers that the horses standing at the gate kicked up their heels, and jerked the horse-boys right and left like bundles of hay.

Nick leaned over the railing and stared.

“Come down and help us sing!” they cried.  “Come down and shout with us in the street!”

“I can na come down—­there’s work to do!”

“Thy ‘can na’ be hanged, and thy work likewise!  Come down and sing, or we’ll fetch thee down.  The Queen hath sent for us!”

“The Queen—­hath sent—­for us?”

“Ay, sent for us to come to court and play on Christmas day!  Hurrah for Queen Bess!”

At that shrill cheer the startled horses fairly plunged into the street, and the carts that were passing along the way were jammed against the opposite wall.  The carriers bellowed, the horse-boys bawled, the people came running to see the row, and the apprentices flew out of the shops bareheaded, waving their dirty aprons and cheering lustily, just for the fun of the chance to cheer.

“It’s true!” called Colley, his dark eyes dancing like stars on the sea.  “Come down, Nick, and sing in the street with us all!  We are going to Greenwich Palace on Christmas day to play before the Queen and the court—­for the first time, Nick, in a good six years; and we’re not to work till the new masque comes from the Master of the Revels!  Come down, Nick, and sing with us out in the street; for we’re going to court, we’re going to court to sing before the Queen!  Hurrah, hurrah!”