182 MASTER SKYLARK

the smell of a wood fire, and liked to toast his toes. He
was a trifle drowsy, too, now that he was warm again to
the marrow of his bones; perhaps he dozed a little.

But suddenly he came to himself again with a sense of
a great stillness fallen over everything—no singing in the
room below, and silence everywhere but in the court, where
there was a trampling as of horses standing at the gate.
And while he was still lazily wondering, a great cheer broke
out in the room below, and there was a stamping of feet
like cattle galloping over a bridge; and then, all at once,
the door opened into the hallway at the foot of the stair,
and the sound burst out as fire bursts from the cock-loft
window of a burning barn, and through the noise and over
it Colley Warren’s voice calling him by name: “Skylark!
Nick Skylark! Ho there, Nick! where art thou?”

He sprang to the door and kicked the rushesaway. All
the hall was full of voices, laughing, shouting, singing,
and cheering. There were footsteps coming up the stair.
“What there, Skylark! Ho, boy! Nick, where art thou?”
he could hear Colley calling above them all. Out he popped
his nose: “Here I am, Colley—what’s todo? Whatever
in the world!” and he ducked his head like a mandarin;
for whizz—flap ! two books came whirling up the stair and
thumped against the panel by his ears.

“The news—the news, Nick! Have ye heard the news?”
the lads were shouting asif possessed. “Were going to
court! Hurrah, hurrah!” And some, with their arms
about one another, went whirling out at the door and
around the windy close like very madecaps, cutting such