162 MASTER SKYLARK

Even were he free to go as he pleased, he knew not
where to turn; for the Lord Chamberlain’s company
would not be at the Blackfriars play-house until Martin-
mas; and before that time to look for even Master Will
Shakspere at random in London town would be worse
than hunting for a needle in a haystack.

To be sure, he knew that the Lord Chamberlain’s men
were still playing at the theater in Shoreditch ; for Master
Carew had taken Cicely there to see the “ Two Gentlemen
of Verona.” But just where Shoreditch was, Nick had
only the faintest idea—somewhere away off by Finsbury
Fields, beyond the city walls to the north of London town
—and all the wide world seemed north of London town ;
and the way thither lay through a bewildering tangle of
streets in which the din and the rush of the crowd were
never still.

From a hopeless chase like that Nick shrank back like
a snail into its shell. He was not too young to know that
there were worse things than to be locked in Gaston
Carew’s house. It were better to be a safe-kept prisoner
there than to be lost in the sinks of London. And so,
knowing this, he made the best of it.

But Master Shakspere was come back to town, and that
was something. It seemed somehow less lonely just to
think of it.

Yet in truth he had but little time to think of it; for
the master-player kept him closely at his strange, new
work, and taught him daily with the most amazing pa-
tience.