Chettle, another
grammar-school boy, who had him down, behind High Cross in the Rother
Market.

[Illustration: "For instance, he knew one Bardolph ... the tapster at
the tavern"]

"In the devil's name," said Bardolph, setting him on his feet, "with
your nose all gore an' never an eye you can open--what do you mean, boy,
to be letting the like of _that_ come over you?" "That" meant Thomas
Chettle, his fists squared, and as red as any fighting turkey, held off
at arm's-length by Bardolph.

"Come over me!" cries Will, with a rush at Thomas, head down, for all
his being held off by Bardolph's other hand. "Who says he has come over
me?"

Now the matter stood thus. The day before, Will Shakespeare had
followed a company of strolling mountebanks about town instead of going
to school. And Thomas Chettle had told Schoolmaster, and he had told
Father. When Will reached home the evening before, Dad was telling as
much to Mother and blaming her for it. "An' Chettle's lad admits Will
had ever rather see the swords an' hear a drum than look upon his
lessons----"

This Father was saying as Will sidled in. Will heard him say it. And so
Thomas Chettle had to answer for it.

"Come over me!" says Will to Bardolph who is holding him off and
contemplating him, a battered wreck. "Come over me!" spitting blood and
drawing a sleeve across his gory countenance, "I'd like to see him do
it!" Will Shakespeare was not one to know when he was beaten.

IX

A year or two more, and school grew more irksome. Father fumed, and
Mother sighed and drew Will against her knee whereon lay new little
Sister Ann while little Sister Joan toddled about the floor. "Canst not
seem to care for your books at all, son?" Mother asked, brushing Will's
red brown hair out of his eyes. "Canst not see how it frets Father, who
would have his oldest son a scholar and a gentleman?"

He meant to try. But hadn't Dad himself let him off one day to tramp
at heels after him and Uncle Henry in Arden Forest? Will Shakespeare at
eleven is a sorry student.

There comes a day when he is a big boy near thirteen years old. It is a
time when the soft, hot winds of spring and the scent and the pulse of
growing things get in the blood, and set one sick panting for the woods
and the feel of the lush green underfoot and the sound of running water.
Not that Will Shakespeare can put it into words--he only knows that when
the smell of the warm, newly turned earth comes in at