12 MASTER SKYLARK

“Nay; take them to the muck-hill. The burgesses ha’
made a great to-do about folk throwing trash into the
highways. Soul and body o’ man!” he growled, “a man
must ask if he may breathe. And good hides going
a-begeing, too!”

Nick hurried away, for he dreaded his father’s sullen
moods.

The swine were squealing in their styes, the cattle
bawled about the straw-thatched barns in Chapel lane,
and long files of gabbling ducks waddled hurriedly down
to the river through the primroses under the hedge. He
could hear the milkmaids calling in the meadows; and
when he trundled slowly home the smoke was creeping up
in pale-blue threads from the draught-holes in the wall.

The tanner’s house stood a little back from the thor-
oughfare, in that part of Stratford-on-Avon where the
south end of Church street turns from Bull lane toward
the river. It was roughly built of timber and plaster, the
black beams showing through the yellow lime in curious
squares and triangles. The roof was of red tiles, and
where the spreading elms leaned over it the peaked gable
was green with moss.

At the side of the house was a garden of lettuce; be-
yond the garden a rough wall on which the grass was
growing. Sometimes wild primroses grew on top of this
wall, and once a yellow daffodil. Beyond the wall were
other gardens owned by thrifty neighbors, and open lands
in common to them all, where foot-paths wandered here
and there in a free, haphazard way.