THE DEAD MAN'S CHEST

One May morning in the brave year 1594, Mistress Betty Hodges, from the threshold of the narrowest house in the narrowest of the narrow streets in the ancient parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, observed with more than passing interest the movements of a gentleman in black.

"Whist, neighbor!" she called out to Mistress Judd, whose portly person well-nigh filled a kindred doorway just across the street. "Yonder stranger should be by every sign in quest of lodgings, and by my horoscope this is a day most favorable for affairs of business. I pray thee, get thy knitting, lest he take us for no better than a pair of idle gossips."

"In faith," retorted Mistress Judd, folding her arms complacently after a side glance in the loiterer's direction, "an he should ever lodge with thee let us hope his shillings prove more nimble than his feet."

The gentleman indeed advanced with much deliberation, pausing from time to time to look about him as a man who balances advantages and disadvantages one against the other. It was a quaint old-mannered thoroughfare he moved in; a crooked street of overhanging eaves and jutting gable ends which nearly met against the sky; a shadowy, sunless, damp, ill-savored street, paved with round pebbles and divided in the middle by a trickling stream of unattractive water. For London, still in happy, dirty infancy, had yet to learn her lessons at the hands of those grim teachers, plague and fire.

"A proper man enough!" Mistress Judd added, "though I'll warrant over-cautious and of no great quality. To me he looks a traveling leech."

"Better a country student of divinity," suggested Mistress Hodges.

"Or better, a minor cleric, or at best some writing-master," Mistress Judd opined.

"Please God, then he can read," rejoined her neighbor, already debating within herself a small advance of rent. "Mayhap he might acquaint me whether those rolls of paper left by Master Christopher in his oaken chest be worth the ten shillings he died owing me."

"An they would fetch as many pence," sniffed Mistress Judd, "our master poet had long ago resolved them into Malmsey."

"Nay, speak not harshly of the dead," protested Mistress Hodges, conveying furtively a corner of her apron to one eye.

"Marry, if Master Kit did sometimes sing o' nights 'twas but to keep the watch awake. I'd wipe my shutter clean and willingly to hear his merry catch again. Ah, he was ever free with money when he had it. And 'twas a pleasure to see him with his bottle. In faith, he'd speak to it and kiss it as a woman would her child."

"And kiss it he did once too often, to my thinking," murmured Mistress Judd unsympathetically, "the night he got to brawling in the street and met his death."

"Marry, he was no brawler," Mistress Hodges protested warmly, "but ever cheerfullest when most in drink. They were thieving knaves who set upon him, and, God be good to sinners, ran him through the heart before the poor young man could so much as recite a couplet to prove himself a poet."

"How thinkst thou poetry would save him?" Mistress Judd demanded curtly.

"Marry, come up! What thief would kill a poet for his purse?" cried Mistress Hodges. "Quick, neighbor, get thy knitting!" she added hurriedly, and catching up a pewter plate began to polish with her apron as the stranger, attracted by their chatter, quickened his pace.

He was a slight man, apparently of thirty or thereabout, with deep-set, penetrating eyes and a lean face ending in the short, sharp, pointed beard in fashion at the time.

"Give you good-morrow, dames," he said, when within speaking distance; "can you direct me to some proper lodging here-about?"

Mistress Hodges dropped a deeper courtesy to draw attention to herself as the person of most importance.

"In truth an't please you, sir," she said, "'tis my good fortune to have this moment ready for your worship the fairest chambers to be had in all the town at four and six the week. Gentility itself could ask no better, for doth not the Lord Mayor live around the corner in his newly purchased Crosby Hall, the tallest house in London, and near at hand do not the gardens of Sir John Gresham stretch from Bishopsgate to Broad Street like a park? And if one would seek recreation, 'tis not five minutes to Cornhill, which is amusing as a fair o' pleasant evenings, with the jugglers and peddlers and goldsmiths and——"

"Ah, by my faith," the stranger interrupted gravely, "I should seek elsewhere, for I am not a man born under Sol, that loveth honor, nor under Jupiter, that loveth business, for the contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly."

"An you be disposed toward contemplation," interposed Mistress Hodges, quickly, "there can be found no purer place in London for such diversion than is my second story back. From thence one may contemplate at will either the almshouse gardens and the woodland beyond Houndsditch, or the turrets of the Tower itself, in winter when the leaves are gone."

"Please Heaven the leaves are thick at present!" said the stranger with a grim half smile. "Nevertheless, I have a mind to look from your back windows. The almshouse gardens may at least teach one resignation."

"Enter an't please you, sir," replied the landlady with a low obeisance.

The stranger made a close inspection of the chamber, peering into cupboards, testing the bed and stools and chairs, and finally pausing before a small oak box secluded in a corner.

"'Tis but a chest of papers left by my last lodger, one Master Christopher," Mistress Hodges explained, adding, "A poet, sir, an't please you, who was slain by highwaymen, and I know not if his lines be fitted for honest ears to hear, though, an one might believe it, they have been spoken in the public play-house. Think you," she added, raising the lid of the chest to disclose a dozen manuscripts or more, bound together with bits of broken doublet lacing, "the lot would bring as much as ten shillings at the rag fair?"

The stranger laughed and shook his head.

"'Tis a great price for any dead man's thoughts," he said, taking up a package at random and hastily turning over the leaves, while Mistress Hodges regarded him anxiously. His interest deepened as he read, and presently his eyes devoured page after page, oblivious of the other's presence.

"In truth," he said at length, "there be lines not wholly without merit."

"And pray you, sir, what is the matter they set forth?" the landlady ventured to inquire.

"This seems the story of a ghost returned to earth to make discovery of his murder—" the stranger was beginning to explain, but Mistress Hodges checked him.

"Marry!" she cried, "such things be profanations and heresy against the Protestant religion, which Heaven defend. Marry, 'twould go ill with the poor woman who should offer such idolatries for sale."

More protestations followed, prompted, no doubt, by fear lest disloyalty to the dominant party be charged against her; to prove her detestation of the documents she declared her purpose to burn the last of them unread.

"Still better, shift responsibility to me," suggested the stranger, smiling grimly at her zeal. "Sell me the lot for two shillings and sixpence, and my word for it the transaction shall be kept a secret. The reading of these idle fancies will serve as a relaxation from my own employment."

"Marry, they shall be yours and willingly," cried the woman, glad to be rid of dangerous property on such generous terms. And it was thus that the stranger became possessor of the chest of manuscripts. His bargaining for the lodgings proved him a man of thrift to the point of meanness, a quality not to be despised in lodgers, for, as Mistress Hodges often said to Mistress Judd, "Gentlemen are ever most liberal who least mean to pay." In answer to reasonable inquiries he would say no more than, "My predecessor was known as Master Christopher; let me be, therefore, Master Francis, a poor scholar who promises only to take himself off before his purse is empty."

The new lodger entered into possession of his chamber on the afternoon of the day on which he saw it first. His luggage, brought thither by two porters on a single barrow, and consisting chiefly of books and manuscripts, proved him to be the humble student he had represented himself, and in a week his neighbors were agreed in rating him a rather commonplace recluse. His days were spent in reverie by the open window or in writing at the parchment-littered table. If he stirred abroad at all it was but for an hour in the long twilight after supper, and his candle rarely burned later than ten o'clock. It was not until a fortnight had gone by that Mistress Hodges had the satisfaction of announcing a visitor.

"Come in!" cried Master Francis, responding to her knock at his chamber door, and not a little surprised by a summons so unusual, for the remnants of his supper had been removed, and he was himself preparing for his evening stroll.

"A gentleman attends below, an't please you, sir," she announced, entering hurriedly.

"Impossible!" her lodger protested, "for how should a visitor inquire for one who has no name?"

"By your description, an't please you, sir," replied the woman. "He drew you to the life. By my faith, there could be no mistake, and when he said you might be known as Master Francis how could I but admit him? Grand gentleman that he is, with a servant at his heels and half a score of varlets waiting within call!"

Master Francis bit his lip and moved impatiently about the room.

"Go tell this grand gentleman that you were wrong," he said. "Tell him I was requested out to supper at half an hour before seven. Tell him what falsehood slips most easily from your tongue, and as you are a woman, tell it truthfully."

"'Twould not avail, for even now your visitor, grown impatient, mounts the stair," replied the hostess, while a heavy footfall coming every moment nearer testified to the truth of her assertion.

"Then off with you and let us be alone," commanded Master Francis, stopping resolutely in his walk, while Mistress Hodges in the doorway found herself thrust unceremoniously aside to give place to a dignified man in middle life. The visitor's dress was black, relieved only by a broad white ruff, yet of so rich a quality that the appointments of the room descended in the scale from homeliness to shabbiness by contrast. But apparently he concerned himself no more with the apartment than with Mistress Hodges.

"How now, nephew?" he began at once. "What means this hiding like a hedgehog in a hole?"

Master Francis bowed with almost servile deference and clasped his hands, making at the same time a gesture with his foot intended to convey to Mistress Hodges an intimation that she was free to go.

"My uncle, this is far too great an honor that you pay me," he said, when the landlady had closed the door behind her.

"Odsblood! For once, I hear the truth from you. Why have you left your chambers in Gray's Inn for this?" the other answered with a movement of the nostrils as though the whole environment was comprehended in a whiff of Mistress Hodges' mutton broth.

"In truth, most gracious kinsman," the younger man rejoined, "since my exclusion from the Court some certain greasy bailiffs have favored me with their company a trifle over often, nor had I otherwhere to go while waiting for a fitting opportunity to recall myself to your lordship's memory."

"And pray you, to what end?" the other asked impatiently.

"You are not ignorant, uncle, of the state of my poor fortune," said the scholar.

"No," was the answer, "nor can you be forgetful, nephew, of my efforts in the past to mend that fortune."

"For all of which believe me truly grateful," responded Master Francis with a touch of irony. "'Tis to your gracious favor that I owe my appointment to the reversion of the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, worth sixteen hundred pounds a year, provided that I, a weak man, survive in poverty a strong affluence. 'Tis like another man's ground buttaling upon his house, which may mend his prospect but does not fill his barn."

The other, crossing to the open window, half seated himself upon the sill, folding his arms while fixing disapproving eyes on his nephew's face.

"This attitude becomes you not at all," he said. "Through me you were returned to Parliament, and through me you might have been advanced to profitable office had you not seen fit to antagonize the Ministry, opposing, for the sake of paltry public favour, that four years' subsidy of which the Treasury stood in dire need to meet the Popish plots."

"I sought to shield the Ministry and Crown from public disapproval," replied Master Francis. "The country in my judgment was not able to endure the tax."

"'Twas most presumptuous to set up your judgment against that of your betters," said the other. "Your part is plain. This act of yours must be forgotten. It must be known that you have once for all abandoned public life for study. Publish some learned disquisition upon what you will. Absent yourself from town, and in a twelvemonth, perhaps, or less if things go well——"

"A twelvemonth!" cried Master Francis. "Unless my pockets be replenished I shall have starved to death by early summer."

The gentleman upon the window-sill remained for a space silent with knitted brows. Presently he said:

"I shall arrange to pay you an allowance, small, but sufficient for your needs, upon condition that you go at once to France, where you already have acquaintances."

"It may be you are right, my lord," responded Master Francis, "but it suits my humor not at all to exile myself, and before accepting your offer grant me permission to speak to the Earl of Essex. He has the favor of the Queen."

The other laughed a scornful laugh, and rising deliberately drew on a glove he had been holding in one hand.

"Enough!" he said. "Depend on Essex's favor with the Queen and follow him to the Tower in good time."

"But, uncle, give me your kind permission at least to speak with him."

"My kind permission and my blessing!" the uncle answered suavely, moving toward the door. With his hand upon the latch he stood to add, across his shoulder, "You are behind the times in news, nephew. Three days ago my Lord of Essex departed somewhat suddenly for his estates—upon a hunting expedition, it is said, though beldame Rumor will insist that our most gracious Queen hath turned the icy eye at last upon his fawning."

"A morning frost!" cried Master Francis with a gesture. "A frost that the recurring sun of pity turns full soon to tender dew. But 'tis a chill of which to take advantage. Let me but follow my peevish lord to his retirement, lock in my humble cause with his, and in due season claim the meet reward of faithful service."

His manner had grown so earnest that the other turned to listen, albeit with a smile of contempt.

"Look you, uncle," the younger man went on, "were I to start at once, travelling in modest state, yet as befitting the nephew of the Lord Treasurer of England, well mounted and attended by a single man-servant, the whole adventure might be managed for a matter of one hundred pounds."

"Good!" cried the other with suspiciously ready acquiescence. "Thou art in verity a diplomat. By all means put your fortunes to the test, and when you have, acquaint me with the issue."

He turned and once more laid a hand upon the latch.

"But," protested Master Francis, "I have still to find the hundred pounds——"

"A riddle for diplomacy to solve!" replied the Lord Treasurer of England, laughing sardonically. "I can tell you no more than that you shall not find it in my purse!" And so saying, he strode from the room, leaving the door wide open.

For many minutes Master Francis paced the floor, muttering to himself, now angry imprecations at his own folly, now curses on the relentless arrogance of the Lord Treasurer. As the long twilight of the season fell he caught up his wide-brimmed hat and hurried from the house.

He took his way through narrow winding streets, and after several turnings came at length to one much wider, a thoroughfare lined with little shops, whose owners when not occupied with customers stood on their thresholds soliciting the patronage of passers-by.

"What do you lack?" they cried; "hats, shoes, or hosiery; gloves, ruffs, or farthingales?" each setting forth the value of his wares in frantic effort to outshout competitors. Along the pavement worthy citizens sauntered with wives and sweethearts, or stood in interested groups about some mountebank or maker of music performing upon several ill-tuned instruments at once. On a patch of trodden grass young men played noisy games of bowls until a gilded coach in passing wantonly destroyed their goal. Here a bout with single-stick was in progress, there a contest with bare fists which must have grown serious had not the watch arrived in time to separate the belligerents with their pikes. But the centre of most interest was a seafaring man who smoked a long-stemmed pipe with rather ostentatious unconcern. The men regarded him with furtive admiration, the women disapprovingly, while children ran to catch a whiff of the strange aromatic scent. When he blew puffs of vapor from his nostrils everybody laughed.

Master Francis, moving hastily aside to make way for the smoker and his escort, came into collision with a man of his own age, whose broad good-humored face showed due appreciation of the scene.

"What think you, friend?" the stranger asked, laughing. "Will this new savagery become an institution? Have we been at such pains to banish smoke from our churches only to turn our heads into censers? Mayhap this be another Popish plot?"

"It seems to me a bit of arrant folly," Master Francis answered somewhat listlessly, "and as such, certain to become the rage."

"They tell us it will prolong the life," went on the other, "for it is well known a herring when smoked outlasts a fresh one."

"Say rather he who smokes will live the longer because the wise die young," retorted Master Francis, pleased by the conceit.

"At least," remarked the stranger, "the fashion will make trade for fairy chimneysweeps."

Some further conversation followed naturally, for Master Francis, weary of his own society, was in the mood to welcome any companionship, and, moreover, the newcomer, who seemed a man of understanding, met another's eyes too frankly to leave the question of his honesty in doubt. They spoke of tobacco as a possible feature in social life, and both agreed that a whiff of the new herb might be an interesting experiment.

"Let us go then to the Bull," the stranger suggested, "where in a small room behind the tap one may smoke a pipe for threepence under the tutelage of this very seaman, who acquired the art in our Virginia colonies."

"Agreed!" cried Master Francis willingly; though at another time he might have rejected such an offer. "'Twill be an experience to remember."

"Marry," replied the other, "'tis he who lags behind the cavalcade who must take the dust. For my part I like not to be outfaced by any idle boaster who may lisp—'Ah, 'tis an art to keep the bowl aglow! Ah, shouldst see me fill my mouth with smoke, and blow it out in rings! Odd's bodkin, the Duke himself said bravo!'"

The stranger's mimicry of the mincing gallants of the day was to the life, and as they turned their steps toward the tavern, Master Francis laughed with satisfaction at finding himself in such good company. When presently his companion quoted Horace, he ventured to inquire at what school he had read the classics.

"At none," was the reply. "Let those who will perform the threshing. I am content to pick up kernels here and there like a sleek rat in a farmer's barn. Your tippling scholar of the taproom will set forth a rasher of lean Xenophon with every cup of sack, and as for churchmen—they be all unnatural sons who so bedeck their mother tongue in scraps and shreds of foreign phrase, the poor beldame walks abroad as motley mantled as a fiddler's wanton."

"But surely—Justitia eum cuique distribuit—as Cicero hath it," Master Francis cried in protest against such heresy. "You will not deny that an apt quotation lends grace to our too barren English."

"'Tis a thin sauce to a rich meat," replied the other; adding modestly, "I am, an't please you, sir, but one who, having little Latin and less Greek, must make a shift with what is left to him."

"Your speech belies you, sir," retorted Master Francis courteously, "for it proclaims a man of nice discrimination. I could swear you are a doctor of the law."

"Then would you be forsworn," replied the other, laughing, "for, by the grace of God, I am near kinsman to the dancing poodle of a country fair. Come any afternoon at three o'clock to the Curtain Play-house at Shoreditch, and there for sixpence you may see my antics."

"Ah, then you are a player!" Master Francis cried, well pleased.

"For the lack of a more honest calling," his companion answered with a gesture as who should say, "Tell me where can be found an honester?"

"Then we are in like case," laughed Master Francis. "Fere totus mundus exercet histrionem, says PhÆdrus; or as one might put it bluntly, 'All the world's a stage.'"

"Methinks our English hath the better jingle," commented the player. "Would that some wordsmith might e'en recoin these ancient mintages to fill the meager purses of our mouths!"

They had come now to the broad low archway leading to the courtyard of the Bull, and passing in beneath its shadow, Master Francis recalled the plays he had witnessed there in boyhood.

"Ah," said his companion, "'tis not so long since we poor players hung our single rag of curtain where we might. Now we have playhouses of our own, and when the servants of the Lord Chamberlain shall occupy the Globe at Bankside, you shall see how plays may be presented. But Navita de ventis de tauris narrat orator, as thy gossip Propertius hath it, though I like best the homely adage, 'A tinker will talk of his trade.'"

They found the seaman in the little room behind the tap, a veritable high priest of some mystic cult in dignity. He bowed a hearty welcome to the visitors and presently made clear to them the true relationship between his pot of dried tobacco and the earthen pipe bowls at the ends of hollow reeds. He cautioned them to have a care, when the coal of fire was applied, not to draw the smoke into their mouths too suddenly and fall to coughing. He was a swarthy man, with brass rings in his ears and long hair braided in a queue behind, and his account of the savage king held captive until the inner secrets of the art of smoking were revealed by way of ransom was in itself a yarn well worth his fee.

"I pray you, gentlemen, hold not the pipe too lightly lest it be overset and mar your garments," he instructed them. "And, by your leave, it must be grasped between the thumb and second finger, nicely balanced that the forearm grow not weary. Should the brain become afflicted by the vapor it is well to pause and inhale some breaths of common air. Extend the little finger carelessly and compose the face as though the flavor were agreeable, for to spit and grimace at the pipe were most inelegant."

"Out upon you for an arrant knave!" cried Master Francis, springing to his feet, exasperated by the solemn affectation of superior wisdom. "'Tis but an indifferent entertainment at the best, and as for the art, I know of none too great a fool to compass it."

He had grown a trifle pale about the lips and his nerves tingled.

"Nay, then," protested his fellow investigator, "were the taste less vile and the savor less like a smithy 'twould make an excellent good physic for one afflicted with too much health."

The sailor was a man of evil disposition, who had not only sailed with Raleigh's godless mariners but, had the truth been known, in other service still less creditable. Hearing his enterprise thus flouted, his anger rose, and with a mighty oath he turned upon his clients.

"A pest upon such horse boys!" he exclaimed. "Get back to the stables whose smells best suit you. Leave elegant accomplishments to your betters."

Master Francis, grown fearful lest his knees give way beneath him, and blinded by a film which swam before his eyes, moved unsteadily toward the door, half throwing, half dropping his pipe upon the oaken table, where the red clay bowl fell shattered in a dozen fragments.

"Hold!" cried the sailor. "Not another step, my gallant, till you have paid me ten shillings for my broken pipe."

He sprang upon the slighter man and, grasping him by the shoulders, would have done him violence had not the other smoker interposed a doubled sinewy fist beneath his irate nose and bade him let go his hold. As the command was not instantly obeyed, a sharp blow followed.

"Beshrew my blood!" the pirate roared, turning to strike at random.

"Gadslid!" returned the player, facing him and bringing both fists into action with such good effect that presently the table groaned beneath the weight of the struggling freebooter, while pipes, jug, and precious weed went flying.

The uproar brought the company from the taproom at a run, customers, servants, the drawer, the pot-boy, a brace of hostlers, until the small room filled to suffocation. Swords were drawn, cudgels brandished, above the din the seaman's oaths boomed like the cannon of a sloop of war in action.

"Good friends," the player bawled out, springing to a stool to command attention, "behold to what a pass the smoking of this weed will bring a man. I pray you bind this fellow fast and get him safe to Bedlam before some mischief happens."

Master Francis sank down into the corner of a high-backed seat, too ill for much concern with what passed about him, and it was not till some moments later, in the open air and propped against a wall, that consciousness returned. His champion in the late encounter stood beside him.

"Sir," said the student, "it is to you I owe my preservation, though, by my honor, I should have cut a better figure in the skirmish had not the vapors of that vile weed overpowered me. How made you our escape?"

"Even as Æneas with Anchises on his back," replied the other, laughing. "'Twas high time to take ourselves away, being but two against so many, though, by my faith, I've rarely seen a merrier opening for a game of skull cracking."

The player, whether actuated by humor or generosity, seemed disposed to make light of the whole affair. Grasping his companion's arm he supported that gentleman's still uncertain steps in the direction of the lodging-house of Mistress Hodges. He spoke of broils and frays as though such pastimes were of every-day occurrence with men of spirit, whether the sport were putting a pinnace crew of drunken sailors to their heels, or by some trickery outwitting the watch. At the door Master Francis could do no less in hospitality than invite so stanch an ally to enter.

"Come to my chambers and rest awhile," he said, adding regretfully, "though they be plain indeed, and offer no better entertainment than my poor company."

"Good cheer enough," replied the other, stepping back for a better view of the house. "By my estates in Chancery!" he cried, "yon bristling roof that sets its lance against the very buckler of the moon hath met mine eyes before. 'Twas here, unless my memory be a lying kitchen wench, our noble Christopher did lodge, the prince and potentate of pewter pots."

"And knew you Master Christopher?" asked Master Francis with increasing interest.

"Marry, I knew him well," replied the player. "Marry, a poet. Marry, a rimester to couple you a couplet while your Flemish fighter quaffs a mug of sack, and pay the reckoning with a sonnet to his landlord's honesty. 'The first line,' he would say, 'shall tell the weight of it.' And here he did set down a naught. 'So likewise with the second, which doth sing its breadth; the third proclaims its depth'—another naught, and thus until the measure of the verse was writ. 'Now add them for thyself,' he bids the rum-fed Malmsey monger, 'and by the thirst of Tantalus, the sum shall blazon both thine honor and my debt.'"

"Methinks 'twas but a scurvy trick," protested Master Francis, laughing tolerantly. "What said the host to it?"

"In faith," replied the player, "he found the meter falling short and clamored for money. 'Money!' quoth Kit. 'Think well on't! for if, as men of reason all agree, naught is better than money, you are overpaid in getting naught!'"

"His was a pretty wit indeed," assented Master Francis. "Enter!" he urged with a gesture of hospitality.

"Nay!" cried the other. "As I am a just man it is perilous to enter into a writer's castle where one without offense is often lashed with lyrics or—what is more fearful—pilloried in prose. And furthermore, this Hebe of all Hodges, I have heard, this Helen of Houndsditch, hath a stout broomstick hid behind her door for players," he added, making a pretense of looking about him warily as he followed his host up the stairs, Master Francis going first to light a candle with a flint and steel.

"Come in," he said as the flame flickered up, "and welcome to my chambers, though this poor farthing dip is little better than a glowworm that doth serve to make the darkness visible."

"So shines a good deed in a naughty world," returned the other, throwing himself into a seat.

"You are yourself a poet!" Master Francis cried, "for you temper the cold iron of rough speech with oil of metaphor."

"Nay," said the player, "I am no rimester, but like a scissors-grinder I sometimes put a keener edge on better men's inventions. Faith," he continued, looking about him with approval, "I knew not that our Kit was housed so well. This is a very bower in which to woo the Muse. Friend, had I your table and your chair, your inkwell and your wit, it would not take me long to be the owner of one hundred pounds."

"One hundred pounds?" gasped Master Francis. "Believe me, it is not from inkwells that such miraculous drafts are made." He waved his hand toward the scattered papers on the table. "Look," he said, "it hath taken me a year to make that much fair paper valueless."

"You waste your time," replied the player lightly. "Instead of learned discourses, treatises, and theses, in which our age will not believe and the next most certainly prove false, you should devise a mask, a mummery, a play to set the groundlings' munching mouths agape, and make the gentle ladies of the boxes mince and murmur to their cavaliers, 'Ah, me, 'tis such a sweet death! Oh, la! and 'twould be pure to be so undone!'"

"A play!" exclaimed the scholar in surprise. "That's a task for poets, not for men of learning."

"Say not so!" the other interposed. "For learning is but poetry turned prude. Coax her with kisses, cozen her with a sigh, give her a broidered girdle and a fan, and call me Cerberus if thy staid Minerva will not tread a merry measure to Orpheus's lute."

"An' should she play the wanton thus for me, how should advantage follow?" Master Francis asked with growing interest, as he leaned forward in the candle-light to catch the answer.

"'Tis simplicity itself," replied the player. "Look you, this new-built play-house of the Globe is shortly to be opened, and the town is at the very finger pricks of curiosity to behold its marvels. The players stand like greyhounds in their gyves, the counters wait the welcome buffets of the coin, and Burbage, madder than a hare in March, bounds doubling on his track hither and thither to find a play."

"Sure London hath as many playwrights as a cheese hath mites," commented Master Francis.

"True," the other answered, "but look you, here's a case when mite and wright agree not. For one is mad, and one hath lost his cunning, and one will spend in drink the money given him for ink, and Kit, the master of them all, is writing comedies for shades in Pluto's courtyard. In troth, there seems no better market for a hundred pounds than 'twere a huckster's hat of rotten cherries."

"An hundred pounds!" gasped Master Francis. "The sum doth spell for me ambition gratified."

"Ah, ha, my lean scholar!" cried the player. "Is not the matter worth considering?"

"Marry, it is," admitted Master Francis, "if one had but the fancy."

"Oh, as to that," returned the other, "I'll warrant when your blood ran hot from the full caldron of lip-scalding youth, thy fancy played you many a pretty mask, for young imagination dreams more dreams than waking age doth have the wit to write. These conjure up again, unbar your closet, unlock your treasure chest—" Here Master Francis gave a start, but the player went on heedlessly: "By my faith, yon rascal coffer well might be the grave wherein the best of thee lies buried."

He made a motion of the hand toward the box of the departed Christopher, and Master Francis's visage in the candle-light turned pale.

"What ails you, man?" the other inquired. "Have you a memory of that last tobacco pipe?"

"Sir," cried Master Francis, rising slowly to his feet, "is it the truth that a play can be sold for so much money?"

"In the Queen's coin," the other answered. "So that it be worth the playing, so it be such a play as Kit could have written."

Master Francis, taking up the candle, moved toward the chest.

"I'll take you at your word," he said. "Like one who creeps with shrouded lanthorn and with muffled spade to force the moldering hinges of the gate of Death, I'll bring you back a play."

He stooped, and lifting the lid seized the first manuscript that met his hand and waved it triumphantly at his companion sitting on the table.

"A play!" cried the other, catching at the roll. "Ah, then I guessed aright. 'Tis a dull writer, fitted best for slumber-wooing churchmen's homilies, who has not in his time chucked blushing Thalia under her fair chin.... What have we here?" he demanded, spreading the pages open before him. "A play, indeed! A comedy, i' faith! Gadslid, a tragedy! A miracle of masterpieces, a masterpiece of miracles! 'Twill be the talk of London town and in the ages yet to come, when stately playhouses shall stand where now the painted savage cleaves his enemy, your play shall win the coy and cautious coin of nations yet unborn, your fame—"

"Peace, peace!" protested Master Francis, with a smile that would have done credit to his uncle, the Lord Treasurer, "you are like a paid praisemonger who bawls loudest to extol the book he has not read."

"'Tis my prophetic soul," returned the player merrily, and waving the scroll above his head he went on: "Hear ye, hear ye, good servants of the Queen, here's meat for your digestions, matter for your minds; here's wit and wisdom, prose and poetry, to make ye swear that brave Kit Marlowe walks the earth again.... Come, gossip, write your name upon the title sheet. You are too modest."

"My name I may not sell," said Master Francis, holding back.

"Unnatural parent!" roared the other. "Would you thus turn your offspring loose upon the world without parentage?"

"I'll not be father to a brat so ill-begotten," replied Master Francis.

"How shall I answer then to Burbage should he ask the writer?" demanded the player.

"As you may," returned Master Francis with a shrug. "An't please you, say it was yourself. I care not, so my name be not revealed."

"'Twill be a jest," the player cried, laughing, "a jest which, should the play find favor, may be at any time corrected."

And taking up a pen he dipped it in the ink-horn to write across the page:

The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare

"A proper title, surely!" commented the scholar, looking across his shoulder. "Your name, friend Will, should lure the public eye more cunningly than that of Francis Bacon."