176 MASTER SKYLARK

and stood before this panel, with a queer, hesitating look
upon his hard, bold face; and stretching out his hand,
would press upon the head of a cherub cut in the bevel
edge. Whereupon the panel slipped away within the
wainscot, leaving a little closet in the hollow of the wall,
in which a few strange things were stowed: an empty
flask, an inlaid rosewood box, a little slipper, and a dusty
gittern with its strings all snapped and a faded ribbon tied
about its neck.

The rosewood box he would take down, and with it open
in his lap would sit beside the fire like a man within a
dream, until the hearth grew white and cold, and the
draught had blown the ashes out in streaks across the
floor. In the box was a woman’s riding-glove and a minia-
ture upon ivory, Cicely’s mother’s face, painted at Paris
in other days.

One night, while they were sitting all together by the
fire, Nick and Cicely snug in the chimney-seat, Carew
spoke up suddenly out of a little silence which had fallen
upon them all. “Nick,” said he, quite softly, with a look
on his face as if he were thinking of other things, “I
wonder if thou couldst play?”

“What, sir?” asked Nick; “a game?” and made the
bellows whistle in his mouth.

“Nay, lad; a gittern.”

Nick and Cicely looked up, for his manner was very
odd.

“Why, sir, I donaknow. Icouldtry. I ha’ heard one
played, and it is passing sweet.”