sister. Indeed, her thoughts were too fully
occupied with another to give admittance to Rebecca's image.

Her lover was in danger--danger to his life and honor. She knew he was
to be saved, yet was not free from anxiety, for she felt that it was to
be her task to save him. To this end she had sent Bacon with his message
to Copernicus. She believed now that a retreat was ready for young
Fenton. How would her confidence have been shaken could she have known
that Copernicus had already left the Panchronicon and that Bacon had
been sent in vain!

In ignorance of this, she stood now at the foot of the stairs and let
her thoughts wander back to the day before, dwelling with tenderness
upon the memory of her lover's patient attendance upon her in that group
of rustic groundlings. With a self-reproachful ache at the heart she
pictured herself as she had sat far up in the gallery gazing downward
with every faculty centred upon the stage, while he, thinking only of
her----

She started and looked quickly to right and left. Why, it was here,
almost upon these very stones, that he had stood. Here she had seen him
for one moment at the last as she was leaving her seat. He was leaning
upon a rude wooden post. She sought it with her eyes and soon caught
sight of it not ten feet away.

Then she noticed for the first time that she was not alone. A young
fellow in the garb of a hostler stood almost where Guy had been the day
before. He paid no attention to Phoebe, for he was apparently deeply
preoccupied in carving some device upon the very post against which Guy
had leaned.

Already occupied with her own tenderness, she was quick to conclude that
here, too, was a lover, busy with some emblem of affection. Had not
Orlando cut Rosalind's name into the bark of many a helpless tree?

Clasping her hands behind her, she smiled at the lad with head thrown
back.

"A wager, lad!" she cried. "Two shillings to a groat thou art cutting a
love-token!"

The fellow looked up and tried to hide his knife. Then, grinning, he
replied:

"I'll no take your challenge, mistress. Yet, i' good faith, 'tis but to
crown another's work."

Then, pointing with his blade:

"See where he hath carved letters four," he continued. "Wi' love-links,
too. A watched un yestre'en, whiles the play was forward. A do but carve
a heart wi' an arrow in't."

She blushed suddenly, wondering if it were Guy who had done this.
Stepping to the side of the stable-boy, sh