the schoolroom
window and the hum of a wandering bee rises above the droning of the
lesson, he lolls on the hacked and ink-stained desk and gazes out at
the white clouds flecking the blue, and all the truant blood in his
sturdy frame pulls against his promises.

Then at length comes a day when the madness is strong upon him and he
hides his books, his Cato's _Maxims_, or perchance his _Confabulationes
Pueriles_, under the garden hedge, and skirting the town, makes his way
along the river. And there, hidden among the willows and green alders
and rustling sedge, he spends the morning; and when in the heat of the
day the fish refuse to nibble, he takes his hunk of bread out of his
pocket and lies on his back among the rushes, while lazy dreams flit
across his consciousness as the light summer clouds rock mistily across
the blue.

[Illustration: "Hidden among the willows ... he spends the morning"]

And, the wandering madness still upon him, in the afternoon he skirts
about and tramps toward Shottery. It is no new thing to go to Shottery
with or without Mother for a day at the Hathaways'. There always has
been rebellion in the blood of Will Shakespeare, and there is a slender,
wayward, grown-up somebody at Shottery who understands. Ann Hathaway has
stayed often in Stratford with the Shakespeare household. Mother loves
Ann; Father teases and twits her; the young men, swains and would-be
sweethearts, swarm about her like bumblebees about the honeysuckle at
the garden gate.

And when she is there, Will himself seldom leaves her side. He has oft
been a rebellious boy, whereat Mother has sighed and Father has sworn;
but Ann, staying with them, and she alone, has laughed. She has
understood.

And there have been times when this tall brown-haired young person has
seized his hand, as if she too had moments of rebellion, and the two
have run away--away from the swains and the would-be sweethearts, the
Latin grammar and the scoldings, to wander about the river banks and the
lanes.

[Illustration: "The two have run away ... to wander about the river
banks."]

X

So this afternoon Will tramped off to Shottery. There was a
consciousness in the back of his mind of wonderful leafiness and
embowering, of vines and riotous bloom about Ann's home. He opened the
wicket and trudged up the path, and peered in at the open door. Ann,
within the doorway, saw him. She looked him in the eye, then up at the
sun yet high in the sk