“Who is that big man in the long coat?” said another, who had not participated in the banter of his companions on the Puritanical devices of Charles and his cronies.  He was jerking his head aside to where a man whom we have known in other scenes was pushing his way through the crowd.

“Don’t know; no one knows, seemingly,” answered the politician whose penetration had solved the mystery of the proclamation against vice and all loose livers.

“He’s been in Lancaster this more nor a week, hasn’t he?”

“Believe he has; and so has the little withered fellow that haunts him like his shadow.  Don’t seem over-welcome company, so far as I can see.”

“Where’s the little one now?”

“I reckon he’s nigh about somewhere.”

Ralph Ray borrowed a link from a boy who was near, and stood before the paper that was posted upon the Cross.  Just then a short, pale-faced, elderly man, with quick eyes beneath shaggy brows, elbowed his way between the people and came up close at Ray’s side.

It was clearly not his object to read the proclamation, for after a glance at it his eyes were turned towards Ralph’s face.  If he had hoped to catch the light of an expression there he was disappointed.  Ralph read the proclamation without changing a muscle of his countenance.  He was returning the link to its owner, when the little man reached out his long finger, and, touching the paper as it hung on the Cross, looked up into Ralph’s eyes with a cunning leer, and said, “Unco’ gude, eh?”

Ralph made no reply.  As though determined to draw him into converse, the little man shrugged his shoulders, and added, “Clarendon’s work that, eh?”

There was still no response, so the speaker continued:  “It’ll deceive none.  It’s lang sin’ the like of it stood true in England—­worse luck!”

The dialect in which this was spoken was of that mongrel sort which in these troublous days was sometimes adopted by degenerate Scotchmen who, living in England, had reasons of their own for desiring to conceal their nationality.

“I’ll wager it’s all a joke,” added the speaker, dropping his voice, but still addressing Ralph, and ignoring the people that stood around them.

Ralph turned about, and, giving but a glance to his interlocutor, passed out of the crowd without a word.

The little man remained a moment or two behind, and then slunk down the street in the direction which Ralph had taken.

There was to be a performance at the theatre that night, and already the people had begun to troop towards St. Leonard’s Gate.  Chairs were being carried down the causeway, with link-boys walking in front of them, and coaches were winding their way among the fires in the streets.  Scarlet cloaks were mingling with the gray jerkins of the townspeople, and swords were here and there clanking on the pavement.

The theatre was a rude wooden structure that stood near the banks of the river, on a vacant plot of ground that bordered the city on the east and skirted the fields.  It had a gallery that sloped upwards from the pit, and the more conspicuous seats in it were draped in crimson cloth.  The stage, which went out as a square chamber from one side of the circular auditorium, was lighted by lamps that hung above the heads of the actors.