nswered Shakespeare, anxious to turn the
conversation from his own share in the day's proceedings, "whose dog won
the silver-studded collar this year in the coursing matches on
Cotswold?" [25]

[Footnote 25: _Merry Wives of Windsor_,]

"Our Bill Peregrine, here, at the farm, carried it off. A prettier bit
of coursing I never did see!"

"Ah! that was the country fellow that turned up when we sounded the mort
by Col-Dene. He seemed to spring up out of the ground. He is a snapper
up of unconsidered trifles, I'll be bound. The fellow claimed the hide:
he said the skin was the keeper's fee." [26]

[Footnote 26: 3 _Henry VI_, III. i.]

"That 'ould be he. I warrant he lent a hand in taking assay and
breaking up the deer. Tis just what he enjoys."

"Ah! I marked him disembowelling the poor dead beast in right good will,
with hands besmeared with blood." [27]

[Footnote 27: _Henry IV._, V. iv.]

Then they fell to talking of other things; and the honest old squire
began to brag about his London days, and how he was once of
Clement's Inn.

"There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George
Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele, a Cotswold man; you had
not four such swinge-bucklers in all the Inns o' Court again." [28]

[Footnote 28: _Henry IV._, III. ii.]

But the old man was far too interested in his own doings to ask if his
guest had ever been in London. It is the prerogative of age to take for
granted that all younger men are of no account, and even as children,
"to be seen and not heard."

"To-morrow," said the squire, "at break of day, we be a-going a-birding,
to try some young falcons Bill Peregrine has lately trained. Wilt join
us, Master Shakespeare?"

"Ah, that I will, sir! I know a hawk from a handsaw, or my name's not
William Shakespeare."

By this time the cold capon and the venison pasty, as well as the
"little tiny kickshaws," together with a gallon of "good sherris-sack,"
had been considerably reduced by the united efforts of the squire, the
famished hunter, and those below the salt. During the meal such scraps
of conversation as this might have been heard:

"Will you please to take a bit of bacon, Master Shakespeare?"

"Not any, I thank you," replied the poet.

"What, no bacon!" put in the serving man from behind, in a voice of
surprise bordering on disappointment.

"No bacon for me, I thank you; _I never take bacon_," repeated
Shakespeare, with some emphasis.

T