serene; and through the shower, out of the breaking
clouds, a sun-gleam like a path of gold straight down to the heart of
London town; and on the south wind, down that path of gold, came April.

That night the wind in the chimney fluted a glad, new tune; and when
Nick looked out at his casement the free stars danced before him in the
sky. And when he felt that fluting wind blow warm and cool together on
his cheek, the chimneys mocked him, and the town was hideous.

* * * * *

It fell upon an April night, when the moon was at its full, that Master
Carew had come to the Falcon Inn, on the Southwark side of the river,
and had brought Nick with him for the air. Master Heywood was along, and
it was very pleasant there.

The night breeze smelled of green fields, and the inn was thronged with
company. The windows were bright, and the air was full of voices. Tables
had been brought out into the garden and set beneath the arbor toward
the riverside. The vines of the arbor were shooting forth their first
pink-velvet leaves, and in the moonlight their shadows fell like
lacework across the linen cloths, blurred by the glow of the lanterns
hung upon the posts.

The folds in the linen marked the table-tops with squares like a
checker-board, and Nick stood watching from the tap-room door, as if it
were a game. Not that he cared for any game; but that watching dulled
the teeth of the hunger in his heart to be out of the town and back
among the hills of Warwickshire, now that the spring was there.

"What, there!--a pot of sack!" cried one gay fellow with a
silver-bordered cloak. "A pot of sack?" cried out another with a feather
like a rose-bush in his cap; "two pots ye mean, my buck!" "Ods-fish my
skin!" bawled out a third--"ods-fish my skin! Two pots of beggarly sack
on a Saturday night and a moon like this? Three pots, say I--and make it
malmsey, at my cost! What, there, knave! the table full of pots--I'll
pay the score."

At that they all began to laugh and to slap one another on the back, and
to pound with their fists upon the board until the pewter tankards
hopped; and when the tapster's knave came back they were singing at the
top of their lungs, for the spring had gotten into their wits, and they
were beside themselves with merriment.

Master Tom Heywood had a little table to himself off in a corner, and
was writing busily upon a new play. "A sheet a day," said he, "doth do
a wonder in a y