Sir Ludar | Page 8

is not to the front. I warrant thee, Robert, thou wast a merry 'prentice once thyself."
"That I never was," said Master Walgrave, with an acid face; "but get in with you, sirrah, and to bed. I had a mind to leave you on the other side of the door this night, to cool your hot blood." And he bolted the door, whilst I slunk up to my garret.
Peter Stoupe was already asleep and snoring; and as he lay clean across the bed, I must needs arouse him to take his own side and make room for me.
"What, Humphrey!--I give God thanks to see thee back," said he, drowsily; "I feared something was amiss. There was a rumour that you lodged this night in Newgate."
"You listened to a lie, then," said I.
"And it is not true, is it, that you naughtily assaulted a gentleman of the Court?"
"And what if I did?" I demanded.
"Alas! Humphrey, think of the trouble it is like to bring on our good master and mistress. Have you no thought for anyone but yourself? Yet, I give thanks thou art safe, so--far--my--good--Humpi--" and here he rolled off to sleep and left me in quiet.
Yet not in peace, for I could not sleep that night for many an hour. For my life seemed to have taken a strange turn round since morning. Before to-day I had thought the 'prentice's life the merriest life in the world. I had cared for nobody, and it had troubled me little if nobody cared for me. Strange that now I felt like a greyhound in the leash, longing to be anywhere but where I was.
Besides, I had more solid grounds for wakefulness. However well to-day I had given my pursuers the slip, I guessed I had not heard the last of Captain Merriman and his merry men. They would find me out; and I might yet become, as Peter had said, a lodger in Newgate, and, worse than that, a cause of trouble and distress to good Master Walgrave and his lady.
For, however poorly I esteemed my master, I could ill afford to bring harm on his family. For my mistress was ever my champion and my friend, and her children I was wont to love as my own brothers and sisters.
So I spent half the night kicking in my bed--of which kicks Master Peter received his full share--and rose very early, resolved to try what hard work could do to cure my unrest.
No one was stirring that I could hear, and I went down the stairs silently and took up my labour at the case. My stick lay on the floor, where I had dropped it the morning before, and, alack! the squabbled type lay there too, a sight to make a man sad. Slowly and painfully I saved what I could, and was setting myself to make good the rest, when my ears caught a strange sound below my feet. It was a beating sound, followed by the dull fall of something, and, on listening, it came and went every two or three minutes.
I had guessed more than once before now that under the house was a cellar, although I had never been there, nor, indeed, knew how to approach it. For there was no opening, front or back, to the outer world that I knew of, and, if there at all, it must be pitch-dark and hard to breathe in. And yet the noise I now heard, if it came from anywhere, came from below. I looked about carefully, hoping for a crack in the floor through which to solve the mystery. But crack there was none. Only as I looked further I saw that the reams of paper, which lay usually near the press, were moved somewhat to one side. Now, as my master was always particular that the paper should lie always in the same place, it seemed strange to me they should be so disturbed. But on going nearer I perceived the reason. For there, usually hidden to view, was now exposed a cunning trap-door, opened by a hinge and sunken ring in the boards.
Now, having found so much, it would have been out of all nature had I gone back to my work and thought no more of the matter; besides, the strange noise still continued. I lifted the door cautiously about an inch and peeped below.
The cellar--for cellar it was--was bright with the light of a lamp, by which I could plainly discern my master (or, as I believed for a moment, my master's ghost), with coat off, and sweating with the heat of the place, working like any journeyman at a printing-press, on which lay a forme of type, which he inked with his balls and struck off in print with the noises which