CHAPTER XXXIV
THE BANDY-LEGGED MAN

, NTIL night fell they sought the town over for a
trace of Cicely ; but all to no avail. The second day
likewise.

The third day passed, and still there were no tidings.
Master Shakspere’s face grew very grave, and Nick’s
heart sickened till he quite forgot that he was going
home.

But on the morning of the fourth day, which chanced
to be the 1st of May, as he was standing in the door of a
printer’s stall in St. Paul’s Churchyard, watching the gaily
dressed holiday crowds go up and down, while Robin
Dexter’s apprentices bound white-thorn boughs about the
brazen serpent overhead, he spied the bandy-legged man
among the rout that passed the north gate by St. Martin’s
le Grand.

He had a yellow ribbon in his ear, and wore a bright
plum-colored cloak, at sight of which Nick cried aloud,
for it was the very cloak which Master Gaston Carew wore

when he first met him in the Warwick road. The rogue
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