DISOWNED 65

“Well reckon up when he cometh home. Master Bruns-
wood tells me he was na at the school the whole day yes-
terday—and he be feared to show his face. Ill fear him
with a bit of birch!”

“Do na be too hard with the lad, Simon,” pleaded Mis-
tress Attwood. “Who knows what hath happened to him ¢
He must be hurt, or he ’d ’a’ come home to his mother ”—
and she began to wring her hands. “He may ha’ fallen
from a tree, and lieth all alone out on the hill—or, Simon,
the Avon! Thou dost na think our lad be drowned?”

“Fudge!” said Simon Attwood. “Born to hang ’ll
never drown!”

When, however, the next day crept around and still his
son did not come home, a doubt stole into the tanner’s
own heart. Yet when his wife was for starting out to
seek some tidings of the boy, he stopped her wrathfully.

“Nay, Margaret,” said he; “thou shalt na go traipsing
around the town like a hen wi’ but one chick. I wull na ha’
thee made a laughing-stock by all the fools in Stratford.”

But as the third day rolled around, about the middle of
the afternoon the tanner himself sneaked out at the back
door of his tannery in Southam’s lane, and went up into
the town.

“Robin Getley,” he asked at the guildschool door, “was
my son wi’ thee overnight?”

“Nay, Master Attwood. Has he not come back?”

“Come back? From where?”

Robin hung his head.

“From where?” demanded the tanner. “Come, boy!”

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