96 MASTER SKYLARK

There the players slipped their poniards, and rode with
rapier in hand; for many a dark deed and cruel robbery
had been done along this stretch of Watling street. And
as they passed, more than one dark-visaged rogue with
branded hand and a price upon his head peered at them
from the copses by the way.

In places where the woods crept very near they pressed
closer together and rode rapidly ; and the horse-boy and
the grooms lit up the matches of their pistolets, and
laid their harquebuses ready in rest, and blew the creep-
ing sparkle snapping red at every turn; not so much
really fearing an attack upon so stout a party of reckless,
dashing blades, as being overawed by the great, mysteri-
ous silence of the forest, the semi-twilight all about, and
the cold, strange-smelling wind that fanned their faces.

The wild spattering of hoofs in water-pools that lay un-
sucked by the sun in shadowy stretches, the grim silence
of the riders, and the wary eying of each covert as they
passed, sent a thrill of excitement into Nick’s heart too
keen for any boy to resist.

Then, too, it was no everyday tale to be stolen away
from home. It was a wild, strange thing with a strange,
wild sound to it, not altogether terrible or unpleasant to
a brave boy’s ears in that wonder-filled age, when all the
world was turned adventurer, and England led the fore ;
when Francis Drake and the “Golden Hind,” John Haw-
kins and the “Victory,” Frobisher and his cockleshells,
were gossip for every English fireside; when the whole
world rang with English steel, and the wide sea foamed