e. Some apprentices had caught a cutpurse in the crowd, and were
beating him unmercifully. Every one pushed and shoved about, cursing the
thief, and those near enough kicked and struck him.

Nick looked back. Carew and the manager had gone into the tiring-room
behind the stage. He took hold of the side-rail and started down the
steps. The man in the red cloak looked up. "Go back there," said he,
sharply; "there's enough down here now." Nick went on around
the gallery.

At the back of the stage were two doors for the players, and between
them hung a painted cloth or arras behind which the prompter stood. Over
these doors were two plastered rooms, twopenny private boxes for
gentlefolk. In one of them were three young men and a beautiful girl,
wonderfully dressed. The men were speaking to her, but she looked down
at Nick instead. "What a pretty boy!" she said, and tossed him a flower
that one of the men had just given her. It fell at Nick's feet. He
started back, looking up. The girl smiled, so he took off his cap and
bowed; but the men looked sour.

At the side of the stage was a screen with long leather fire-buckets and
a pole-ax hanging upon it, and behind it was a door through which Nick
saw the river and the gray walls of the old Dominican friary. As he came
down to it, some one thrust out a staff and barred the way. It was the
bandy-legged man with the ribbon in his ear, Nick looked out longingly;
it seemed so near!

"Master Carew saith thou art not to stir outside--dost hear?" said the
bandy-legged man.

"Ay," said Nick, and turned back.

There was a narrow stairway leading to the second gallery. He went up
softly. There was no one in the gallery, and there was a window on the
side next to the river; he had seen it from below. He went toward it
slowly that he might not arouse suspicion. It was above his head.

[Illustration: "NICK PUT ONE LEG OVER THE SILL AND LOOKED BACK."]

There were stools for hire standing near. He brought one and set it
under the window. It stood unevenly upon the floor, and made a wabbling
noise. He was afraid some one would hear him; but the apprentices in
the pit were rattling dice, and two or three gentlemen's pages were
wrangling for the best places on the platform; while, to add to the
general riot, two young gallants had brought gamecocks and were fighting
them in one corner, amid such a whooping and swashing that one could
hardly have heard the skies fall.

A printer's man w