The Splendid Spur | Page 6

half that."
"And how if it had been a puppy, Mr. X?"
Now all this from my hiding I had heard very clearly, for they stood
right under me in the dusk. But as the old gentleman paused to let his
question sink in, and the bully to catch the drift of it before answering,
one of the dicers above struck up to sing a catch----

"With a hey, trolly-lolly! a leg to the Devil, And answer him civil, and
off with your cap: Sing--Hey, trolly-lolly! Good-morrow, Sir Evil,
We've finished the tap, And, saving your worship, we care not a rap!"
While this din continued, the stranger held up one forefinger again, as
if beseeching silence, the other remaining still between the pages of his
book.
"Pretty boys!" he said, as the noise died away; "pretty boys! 'Tis easily
seen they have a bird to pluck."
"He's none of my plucking."
"And if he were, why not? Sure you've picked a feather or two before
now in the Low Countries--hey?"
"I'll tell you what," interrupts the big man, "next time you crack one of
your death's-head jokes, over the wall you go after the dog. What's to
prevent it?"
"Why, this," answers the old fellow, cheerfully. "There's money to be
made by doing no such thing. And I don't carry it all about with me. So,
as 'tis late, we'd best talk business at once."
They moved away toward the seat under the sycamore, and now their
words reached me no longer--only the low murmur of their voices or
(to be correct) of the elder man's: for the other only spoke now and then,
to put a question, as it seemed. Presently I heard an oath rapped out and
saw the bully start up. "Hush, man!" cried the other, and "hark-ye
now--"; so he sat down again. Their very forms were lost within the
shadow. I, myself, was cold enough by this time and had a cramp in
one leg--but lay still, nevertheless. And after awhile they stood up
together, and came pacing across the bowling- green, side by side, the
older man trailing his foot painfully to keep step. You may be sure I
strain'd my ears.
"--besides the pay," the stranger was saying, "there's all you can win of
this young fool, Anthony, and all you find on the pair, which I'll

wager--"
They passed out of hearing, but turned soon, and came back again. The
big man was speaking this time.
"I'll be shot if I know what game you're playing in this."
The elder chuckled softly. "I'll be shot if I mean you to," said he.
And this was the last I heard. For now there came a clattering at the
door behind me, and Mr. Robert Drury reeled in, hiccuping a maudlin
ballad about "Tib and young Colin, one fine day, beneath the haycock
shade-a," &c., &c., and cursing to find his fire gone out, and all in
darkness. Liquor was ever his master, and to- day the King's health had
been a fair excuse. He did not spy me, but the roar of his ballad had
startled the two men outside, and so, while he was stumbling over
chairs, and groping for a tinder-box, I slipp'd out in the darkness, and
downstairs into the street.
CHAPTER II.
THE YOUNG MAN IN THE CLOAK OF AMBER SATIN,
Guess, any of you, if these events disturbed my rest that night. 'Twas
four o'clock before I dropp'd asleep in my bed in Trinity, and my last
thoughts were still busy with the words I had heard. Nor, on the
morrow, did it fair any better with me: so that, at rhetoric lecture, our
president--Dr. Ralph Kettle--took me by the ears before the whole class.
He was the fiercer upon me as being older than the gross of my
fellow-scholars, and (as he thought) the more restless under discipline.
"A tutor'd adolescence," he would say, "is a fair grace before meat,"
and had his hourglass enlarged to point the moral for us. But even a
rhetoric lecture must have an end, and so, tossing my gown to the
porter, I set off at last for Magdalen Bridge, where the new barricado
was building, along the Physic Garden, in front of East Gate.
The day was dull and low'ring, though my wits were too busy to heed
the sky; but scarcely was I past the small gate in the city wall when a

brisk shower of hail and sleet drove me to shelter in the Pig Market ( or
Proscholium) before the Divinity School. 'Tis an ample vaulted passage,
as I dare say you know; and here I found a great company of people
already driven by the same cause.
To describe them fully 'twould be necessary to paint the whole