das, burned in yawning Hell.

VI

But as spring came, the garden offered a broader stage for life. The
Shakespeare house was in Henley Street, and a fine house it was--too
fine, some held, for a man in John Shakespeare's
circumstances--two-storied, of timber and plaster, with dormer-windows
and a penthouse over its door. And like its neighbors, the house stood
with a yard at the side, and behind, a garden of flowers and fruit and
herbs. And here the boy played the warm days through, his mother
stepping now and then to the lattice window to see what he was about.
And, gazing, often she saw him through tears, because of a yearning love
over him, the more because of the two children dead before his coming.

[Illustration: "His mother stepping now and then to the lattice window
..."]

And Will, seeing her there, would tear into the house and drag her by
the hand forth into the sweet, rain-washed air.

"An' see, Mother," he would tell her, as he haled her on to the sward
beyond the arbor, "here it is, the story you told us yester-e'en. Here
is the ring where they danced last night, the little folk, an' here is
the glow-worm caught in the spider's web to give them light."

But something had changed Mary Shakespeare's mood. John Shakespeare,
chief bailiff and burgess of Stratford, was being sued for an old debt,
and one which Mary Shakespeare had been allowed to think was paid.
Thereupon came to light other outstanding debts of which she had not
known which must be met. John Shakespeare, with irons in so many fires,
seemed forever to have put money out, in ventures in leather, in wool,
in corn, in timber, and to have drawn none in. And now he talked of a
mortgage on the Asbies estate.

"Never," Mary told herself, with a look at little Will, at toddling
Gilbert at her feet, with a thought for the unborn child soon to add
another inmate to the household--"not with my consent. When the time
comes they are grown, what will be left for them?"

She was bitter about the secrecy of those debts incurred unknown to her.
And yet to set herself against John!

Wandering with the children down the garden-path, idly she plucked a red
rose and laid its cheek against a white one already in her hand. A
kingdom divided against itself.

She sighed, then became conscious of the boy pulling at her sleeve.

"Tell us a story, Mother," he was begging, "a story with fighting an' a
sword."

"A story, Will, with fighting and a swor