THE MASTER-PLAYER 37

orchards and girdled with spring. Northward the forest
of Arden clad the rolling hills. Southward the fields of
Feldon stretched away to the blue knolls beyond which lay
Oxford and Northamptonshire. The ragged stretches of
Snitterfield downs scrambled away to the left; and on the
right, beyond Bearley, were the wooded uplands where
Guy of Warwick and Heraud of Arden slew the wild ox
and the boar. And down through the midst ran the Avon
southward, like a silver ribbon slipped through Kendal
green, to where the Stour comes down, past Luddington.
to Bidford, and away to the misty hills.

“Why,” exclaimed the master-player—“ why, upon my
word, it is a fair town—as fair a town as the heart of man
could wish. Wish? I wish ’t were sunken in the sea,
with all its pack of fools! Why,” said he, turning wrath-
fully upon Nick, “that old Sir Thingumbob of thine, down
there, called me a caterpillar on the kingdom of England,
a vagabond, and a common player of interludes! Called
me vagabond! Me! Why, I have more good licenses
than he has wits. And as to Master Bailiff Stubbes, I
have permits to play from more justices of the peace than
he can shake a stick at in a month of Sundays!” He
shook his fist wrathfully at the distant town, and gnawed
his mustache until one side pointed up and the other down.
“But, hark ’e, boy, I ll have my vengeance on them all—
ay, that will I, upon my word, and on the remnant of mine
honour—or else my name’s not Gaston Carew!”

“Ts it true, sir,” asked Nick, hesitatingly, “that they
despitefully handled you?”