Читать книгу Captain Ravenshaw; Or, The Maid of Cheapside. A Romance of Elizabethan London - Robert Neilson Stephens - Страница 3

It was long past curfew, yet Captain Ravenshaw still tarried in the front room of the Windmill tavern, in the Old Jewry. With him were some young gentlemen, at whose cost he had been drinking throughout the afternoon. For their bounty, he had paid with the satirical conversation for which he was famed, as well as with richly embellished anecdotes of his campaigns. Late in the evening, the company had been joined by a young gallant who had previously sent them, from another chamber, a quantity of Rhenish wine. This newcomer now ordered supper for the party, a proceeding at which the captain dissembled his long-deferred pleasure – for he had not eaten since the day before. Moreover, besides the prospect of supper, there was this to hold him at the tavern: he knew not where he should look for a bed, or shelter, upon leaving it. The uncertainty was a grave consideration upon so black and windy a night.

Master Vallance, the gentleman who had ordered supper, had listened to the last of Ravenshaw's brag with a rather scornful silence. But the other young men had been appreciative; it was their pose, or affectation, to be as wicked as any man might; hence they looked up to this celebrated bully as to a person from whom there was much to be learned, and in whom there was much to be imitated.

The group had been sitting before the wide fireplace. But as soon as the roast fowls were brought in, there was a movement to the long table in the middle of the room. The captain was gifted with active, striding legs and long, slashing arms. So he was first to be seated, and, as he leaned forward upon his elbows, he seemed to cover more than his share of the table. He had a broad, solid forehead, an assertive nose, a narrow but forward chin, gray eyes accustomed to flash with a devil-may-care defiance, a firm mouth inured to a curve of sardonic derision. His rebellious hair, down-turning moustaches, and pointed beard were of a dark brown hue. He was a man of good height; below the sword-belt, he was lank to the ground; above, he broadened out well for chest and shoulders. His voice was quick, vigorous, and not unpleasantly metallic. He was under thirty, but rough experience had hardened his visage to an older look. His jerkin, shirt, hose, shoes, and ruff also betokened much and severe usage.

Master Vallance, in spotless velvet doublet and breeches, and perfectly clean silk stockings, looked at him with contemptuous dislike.

"Take heed you scorch not the capon with your nose, roaring Ravenshaw," said the youth, quietly.

It was not Ravenshaw's habit to resent allusions to his character as a "roaring boy;" indeed he encouraged the popular idea which saddled him with that title, at that time applied to bullies of the taverns. But some circumstance of the moment, perhaps something in the young coxcomb's air of aristocratic ridicule, guided the epithet to a sensitive spot.

"Captain Ravenshaw, by your leave," he said, instantly, in a loud tone, with an ironical show of a petitioner's deference.

"Forsooth, yes; a captain of the suburbs," replied the young gentleman, with a more pronounced sneer.

Now at this time – toward the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth – and for a long time after, certain of the suburbs of London were inhabited numerously by people of ill repute. There were, especially, women whom the law sometimes took in hand and sent to the Bridewell to break chalk, or treated to a public ride in a cart, as targets for rotten vegetables, addled eggs, and such projectiles. Many an unemployed soldier, or bully who called himself soldier, would bestow, or impose, his protection upon some one of these frail creatures in the time of her prosperity, exacting from her the means of livelihood. Hence did Ravenshaw see in the title of "captain of the suburbs" an insult little less than lay in that of "Apple-John," or "Apple-squire," itself.

When a gentleman calls another by the name of a bad thing, it is not necessarily implied that he thinks the other is that thing; but it is certain that he means to be defiantly offensive. Therefore, in this case, the captain's part was not to deny, but to resent. Not only must he keep up his reputation with the other gentlemen as a man not to be affronted, but he really was in a towering rage at being bearded with easy temerity by such a youngling.

"What!" quoth he. "Thou sprig! Thy wits are strayed away, methinks. Or has thy nurse been teaching thee to use a pert tongue?"

"Nay, save your own tongue for the tasting of yon capon. I speak only truth. Your reputation is well known."

"Why, thou saucy boy, I may not spit butterflies on my sword, nor provoke striplings by giving them the lie; else – "

The captain finished with a shrug of vexation.

"Look ye, gentlemen, he lays it to my youth," continued the persecutor, "but there's yet a horse of another colour. This captain is free enough with his bluster and his sword; he has drawn quarts of blood for a single word that misliked him, upon occasion; but he will bear a thousand scurvy affronts from any man for the sake of a supper. You shall see – "

"Supper!" echoed the captain, springing up. "Do you cast your filthy supper in my teeth? Nay, then, I'll cast it in thine own."

With this, thoroughly enraged, Captain Ravenshaw seized the particular capon to which the gallant had alluded, and flung it across the table into the gallant's face. It struck with a thud, and, rebounding, left the young man a countenance both startled and greasy. Not content, the offended captain thereupon reached forth to the fowl which had been served as companion to the capon, and this he hurled in the same direction. But he aimed a little too high, moreover the fop ducked his head, and so the juicy missile sped across the room, to lodge plump against the stomach of a person who had just then come into view in the open doorway.

This person showed lean in body and shabby in raiment. He made a swift, instinctive grasp at the thing with which he had come so unexpectedly in contact, and happened to catch it before it could fall to the floor. He held it up with both hands to his gaze a moment, and then, having ascertained beyond doubt its nature, he suddenly turned and vanished with it. Let us follow him, leaving behind us the scene in the tavern room, which scene, upon the landlady's rushing in to preserve order for the good name of the house, was very soon after restored to a condition of peace by the wrathful departure of Ravenshaw from the company of an offender too young for him to chastise with the sword.

The ill-clad person who clutched the cooked fowl, which accident had thus summarily bestowed upon him, made short work of fleeing down the stairs and out into the black, chill February night. Once outside, though he could not see his hand before his face, he turned toward Cheapside and stumbled forward along the miry way, his desire evidently being to put himself so far from the Windmill tavern that he might not be overtaken by any one who could lay claim to the fowl.

The air was damp as well as cold. The fugitive, keeping his ungloved hands warm by spreading them around the fowl, which was fresh from the spit, had to grope his way through an inky wind. He listened for possible footfalls behind him, but he heard none, and so he chuckled inwardly and held his prize close to his breast with a sense of security. Now and then he raised it to his nostrils, in anticipation of the feast he should enjoy upon arriving at the resting-place he had in mind. He would have made a strange spectacle to anybody who might have been able to see him from one of the rattling casements as he passed; but so dark it was that downlookers could no more have seen him than he could see the painted plaster, carved cross-timbers, projecting windows, and gabled roof-peaks of the tall houses that lined the narrow street through which he fled.

At one place a lantern hanging over a door threw a faint light upon him for a moment, and showed a young man's face, with sharp features and a soft expression; but the face was instantly gone in the darkness, and there was no other night-walker abroad in the street to have seen it while it was visible.

"Surely," he meditated, as he went, "the time of miracles has returned. And even a starved scholar is found worthy of Heaven's interposition. With the temerity of the famished, I enter a tavern, ascend the stairs, and steal into a room which I take to be empty because no sound comes from it, my only hope being to pilfer a little warmth nobody will miss, perchance to fall heir to a drop of wine at the bottom of a glass, or a bone upon an uncleared table. And lo, I find myself in the presence of a gentleman asleep before a pot of mulled canary, which he has scarce wet his throat withal. In three swallows I make the canary my own, just in time to set down the pot before in comes a tapster. I feign I am in search of friends, who must be in t'other chamber. To make good the deceit, I must needs look in at t'other chamber door; when, behold, some follower of Mars, who looks as hungry as myself, pelts me with poultry. It is plainly a gift of the gods, and I am no such ill-mannered clown as to stay and inquire into the matter. Well, gaudeamus igitur, my sweet bird; here we are at St. Mary Cole Church, on the steps of which we shall make each other's better acquaintance. Jove! – or rather Bacchus! – what tumult a pint or so of mulled wine makes in the head of a poor master of arts, when too suddenly imbibed!"

He went half-way up the steps and sat down, crouching into the smallest figure possible, as if he might thus offer the least surface to the cold. Sinking his teeth into the succulent breast of the roast fowl, he forgot the weather in the joy of eating. But he had scarce taken two bites when he was fain to suspend his pleasure, for the sound of rapid footfalls came along the way he had just traversed. He took alarm.

"Sit quiet now, in God's name, Master Holyday!" he mentally adjured himself. "'Tis mayhap one in search of the fowl. Night, I am beholden to thee for thy mantle."

The person strode past and into Cheapside without apprehension of the scholar's presence upon the steps. The scholar could not make out the man's looks, but could divine from sundry muttered oaths he gave vent to, and from his incautious haste of movement, that he was angry.

"God 'a' mercy! how he takes to heart the loss of a paltry fowl!" mused Master Holyday, resuming the consumption of his supper on the church steps. "For, certes, 'twas from the Windmill he came; from his voice, and the copiousness of his swearing, I should take him to be that very soldier whom the gods impelled to provide me with supper. Well, he is now out of hearing; and a good thing, too, for there comes the moon at last from the ragged edge of yon black cloud. Blow, wind, and clear the sky for her. Pish! what is this? Can I not find my mouth? Ha, ha! 'tis the mulled wine."

The scholar had indeed struck his nose with the fowl, when he had meant to bring it again between his teeth. He was conscious of the increased effect of the wine in other ways, too, and chiefly in a pleasanter perception of everything, a sense of agreeable comicality in all his surroundings, a warmed regard for all objects within view or thought. This enhanced the enjoyment of his meal. The moonlight, though frequently dimmed by rushing scraps of cloud, made visible the streets near whose junction he sat, so that the house fronts stood strangely forth in weird shine and shadow. The scholar, shivering upon the steps, was the only living creature in the scene. Yet there seemed to be a queer half-life come into inanimate things. The wind could be heard moaning sometimes in unseen passages. The hanging signs creaked as if they now and then conversed one with another in brief, monosyllabic language.

"In the daylight," thought the scholar, "men and women possess the streets, their customs prevail, and their opinions rule. But now, forsooth, the house fronts and the signs, the casements and the weathercocks, have their conference. Are they considering solely of their own matters, or do they tell one another tales of the foolish beings that move about on legs, hurrying and chattering, by day? Faith, is it of me they are talking? See with what a blank look those houses gaze down at me, like a bench of magistrates at a rogue. But the house at the end, the tall one with the straight front, – I swear it is frowning upon me. And the one beside it, with the fat oriel windows, and whose upper stories belly so far out over the street, – as I'm a gentleman and a scholar, 'tis laughing at me. Has it come to this? – to be a thing of mirth to a monster of wood and plaster, a huge face with eyes of glass? For this did Ralph Holyday take his degrees at Cambridge University, and was esteemed as able a disputant as ever came forth of Benet College? Go thy ways, Ralph; better wert thou some fat citizen snoring behind yon same walls, than Master Holyday, magister artium, lodging houseless on the church steps with all thy scholarship. Not so, neither; thou wouldst be damned rather! Hark, who is it walks in Cheapside, and coming this way, too?"

He might have recognised the tread as the same which had some minutes before moved in the opposite direction; though it was now less rapid, as if the owner of the feet had walked off some of his wrath. Coming into view at the end of the Old Jewry, that owner proved to be in truth the very soldier of whom Holyday had caught a glimpse at the tavern. The soldier, turning by some impulse, saw the scholar on the steps; but his warlike gaze had now no terror for Master Holyday, who had put at least half of the fowl beyond possible recovery, and whose appetite was no longer keen.

"God save you, sir!" said the scholar, courteously. "Were you seeking a certain roast fowl?"

"Not I, sirrah," replied Captain Ravenshaw, approaching Holyday. "You are he that stood in the doorway, perchance? Rest easy; the fowl was none of mine. I should scorn to swallow a morsel of it."

And yet he eyed it in such a manner that Master Holyday, who was a good judge of a hungry glance, said, placidly:

"You are welcome to what is left of it here." Which offer the scholar enforced with a satisfied sigh, indicating fulness of stomach.

The captain made a very brief pretence of silent hesitation, then accepted the remainder of the feast from the scholar's hands, saying:

"Worshipful sir, it should go hard with me ere I would refuse true hospitality. Have I not seen you about the town before this night?" He sat down beside Holyday, and began to devour the already much-diminished fowl.

"I know not," replied the scholar, who had a mild, untroubled way of speaking. "'Twas last Michaelmas I came to London. I have kept some riotous company, but, if I have met you, I remember not."

"'Slight! you know then who I be?"

"Not I, truly."

"Yet you call me riotous."

"That argues no previous knowledge. Though I be a Cambridge man, it takes none of my scholarship to know a gentleman of brawls at sight, a roaring boy, a swaggerer of the taverns – "

"Why, boy, why! Do you mean offence in these names?"

"No offence in the world. You see I bear no sword, being but a poor master of arts. None so bold of speech as the helpless, among honourable men of the sword."

"Some truth in that. Look ye, young sir, hast ever heard of one Ravenshaw, a captain, about the town here?"

"Ay, he is the loudest roarer of them all, I have heard; one whose bite is as bad as his bark, too, which is not the case with all of these braggadocios; but he is a scurvy rascal, is he not? a ragged hector of the ale-houses. Is it he you mean?"

"Ha! that is his reputation? Well, to say truth, he may comfort himself by knowing he deserves it. But the world used him scurvily first – nay, a plague on them that whine for themselves! I am that Ravenshaw."

"Then I must deal softly; else I am a hare as good as torn to pieces by the dogs."

"Why, no, scholar, thou needst not be afeard. I like thee, young night-walker. Thou wert most civil concerning this fowl. 'Od's light! but for thee, my sudden pride had played my belly a sad trick this night. Thou art one to be trusted, I see, and when I have finished with this bird, I will tell thee something curious of my rascal reputation. But while I eat, prithee, who art thou? and what is it hath sent thee to be a lodger on the steps of St. Mary Cole Church? Come, scholar; thou might do worse than make a friend of roaring Ravenshaw."

"Nay, I have no enemies I would wish killed. But I am any man's gossip, if he have inclination for my discourse, and be not without lining to his headpiece. My name is Ralph Holyday; I am only son to Mr. Francis Holyday, a Kentish gentleman of good estate. He is as different a manner of man from me as this night is from a summer day. He is stubborn and tempestuous; he will have his way, though the house fall for it. He has no love of books and learning, neither; but my mother, seeing that I was of a bookish mind, worked upon him unceasingly to send me to the university, till at last, for peace' sake, he packed me off to Cambridge. While I was there, my mother died – rest her soul, poor lady! After I took my degrees, my father would have it that I come home, and fit myself to succeed him. Home I went, perforce, but I had no stomach for the life he would lead me. I rather preferred to sit among my books, and to royster at the ale-house in company with a parson, who had as great love for learned disputation as for beer and venison. Many a pleasant day and night have I sat with good Sir Nicholas, drinking, and arguing upon the soul's immortality. This parson had sundry friends, too, good knaves, though less given to learning than to tossing the pot; they were poachers all, to say truth, and none better with the crossbow at a likely deer than the vicar. Thus, when I ought to have been busy in the matter of preserving my father's deer, I would be abroad in forbidden quest of other men's; 'twas, I know not how, the more sportive and curious occupation. Well, my father stormed at these ways of mine, but there was no method of curing them. But one day he became fearful his blood should die out. He must have descendants, he swore, and to that end I must find a wife straightway. Here is where we crossed weapons. I am not blind to the charms of women, but I am cursed with such timidity of them, such bashfulness when I am near them, that if I tried to court one, or if one were put upon me as wife, I should fall to pieces for shaking. I would sooner attempt anew the labours of Hercules than go a-wooing for a wife."

"'Tis a curious affliction," remarked the captain, pausing in his feast. "But many men have it; fighting men, too. There was Dick Rokeby, that was my comrade in France; he that fought with Harry Spence and me, each one 'gainst t'other two, upon the question of the properest oath for a soldier to swear by. Harry was one of your Latin fellows, and held for 'the buckler of Mars.' Dick Rokeby said an Englishman could do no better than swear by the lance of St. George. And I vowed by the spurs of Harry Fift' I would put down any man that thought better of any other oath. We fought it out, three-cornered, in Grey's Inn Fields; and the spurs of Harry Fift' won the day. As for women, I am their enemy on other grounds. There was one I trusted, and when I was at the wars she wronged me with my friend. I have sworn revenge upon the sex, curse 'em! So you would not marry?"

"That I would not. The only women I can approach without trembling at the knees, and my face burning, and my tongue sticking fast, are serving-maids and common drabs, and such as I would not raise to a place of quality. So the end was that, after he had raged and threatened for six months, my father cast me forth, swearing I should never cross his doorsill, or have a penny of him, till I should come back with a wife on my arm. And so I came last Michaelmas to London."

"And how hast made shift to live since then?"

"Why, first upon some money my friend Sir Nick thrust upon me; then by the barter of my clothes in Cornhill; and meanwhile I had writ a play, a tragedy, that Master Henslowe gave me five pounds for."

"I would fain see thy tragedy. How is it named?"

"God knows when it may be played; it has not yet been. It is 'The Lamentable Tragedy of Queen Nitocris.' The story is in a Greek history."

"What, you dare not even discourse with a mere gentlewoman, yet write the intimate histories of queens?"

"Yes, friend; there are many of us poor poets do so. We herd with trulls, and dream of empresses. (A passable decasyllabic line, that!) But I have not been able to sell another tragedy, nor yet to have my sonnets printed, whereby I might get ten pounds for a dedication. And so you see me as I am."

"Well," said the captain, having by this time pretty well stuffed himself, "I like thee the better for being a poet. Such as you know me to be, you will scarce believe it; but I am one – or was once – fitted by nature to take joy in naught so much as in poetry, and the sweet pastoral life that poets praise so. But never whisper this; I were a dead man if the town knew the softness underneath my leathern outside. But in very truth, as for books, I would give all the Plutarchs in the world for one canto of 'The Faerie Queene' or ten pages of the gentler part of Sidney's 'Arcadia.' Had I won my choice, I had passed my days, not in camps and battles, taverns and brawls, but in green meadows, sitting and strolling among flowers, reading some book of faery or shepherds – for I never could make up poetry of my own."

"That picture belies the common report of Captain Ravenshaw."

"Ay, Master Holyday; swaggering Ravenshaw is no shepherd of poesy. But hearken to what I promised thee: I, too, am a gentleman's son; the family is an old one in Worcestershire, – observe I call it not my family. I was early a cast-off scion, and for no fault of mine, I swear. 'Twas the work of a woman, a she-devil, that bewitched my father. But God forbid I should afflict any man, or rouse mine own dead feelings, with the tale of my wrongs! I was no roaring boy then; I was a tame youth, and a modest. But when I found myself out in the world, I soon learned that with a mild mien, unless a man have a craftiness I lacked, he is ever thrust backward, and crushed against the wall, or trodden upon in the ditch. And so for policy I took the time and pains to make myself a master of the sword, not that I might brawl, but that I might go my ways in peace. In good time, I killed two men or so that were thought invincible; and I supposed the noise of this would save me from affronts after that."

"And was it not so?"

"Perchance it had been, if my manner had comported with the deed. But I still went modest in my bearing, and so my prowess was soon forgot; some may have thought my victories an accident of fortune; besides, strangers knew not what I had done, and saw no daring in me; and so I found myself as unconsidered as ever. And at last, when the woman I loved turned treacherous and robbed me of the friend at court on whom my fortune hung, and malice was hatched in me, I bethought me of a new trick. I took on a bold front, an insolent outside; I became a swearer, a swaggerer, a roaring boy, a braggart; and lo! people soon stepped aside to let me pass. I found this blustering masquerade a thousand times more potent to secure immunity than my real swordsmanship had been. The transformation was but skin-deep at first; but the wars, and my hard life and my poverty, helped its increase, so that now it has worked in to the heart of me. There was a time it made me ill to sink my rapier into a man's soft flesh, but I grew to be of stronger stomach. And when I first put on the mask of brazen effrontery, I was often faint within when I seemed most insolent. But now I am indeed roaring Ravenshaw, all but a little of me, and that little often sleeps."

"But this insolence of thine, real or false, seems not to have made thy fortune."

"Nay, but it has made my poverty the less contemptible. Lay not my undoing to it. When the war lasted, I fared well enough, as long as I kept the captainship my friend had got me ere the woman played me false. A score of things have happened to bring me to this pass. My braggadocio, ofttimes enforced with deeds, hath neither helped nor hindered my downfall; it hath stood me in good stead in fair times and foul. Pish, man, but for my reputation, and the fear of my enmity or violence, could I have run up such scores at taverns as I have done, being penniless? How often have I roared dicing fools, and card-playing asses, out of the stakes when they had fairly won 'em? Could any but a man who has made himself feared do such things, and keep out of Newgate or at least the Counter i' the Poultry here?"

"Why, is not that rank robbery, sir?"

"Yes, sir, and rank filling of my empty stomach. Tut, scholar, you have been hungry yourself; roofless, too. Be so as oft as I have been, and with as small chance of mending matters, and I'll give a cracked three farthings for what virtue is left in you. Boy, boy, hast thou yet to learn what a troublesome comrade thy belly is, in time of poverty? What a leader into temptation? Am I, who was once a gentleman, a rascal as well as a brawler? Yes, I am a rascal. So be it; and the more beholden I to my rascality when it find me a dinner, or a warm place to sleep o' nights. Would it might serve us now. Who are these a-coming?"

Some dark figures were approaching from up the Old Jewry, attended by two fellows bearing links, for the moonlight was not to be relied upon. The figures came arm in arm, at a blithe but unsteady gait, swaying and plunging. Presently the captain recognised the gentlemen who had been his afternoon companions at the sign of the Windmill. But Master Vallance was not with them, having doubtless taken lodging at one of the inns near the tavern. The sparks, jubilant with their wine, no sooner made out the captain's form than they hailed him heartily.

"What, old war boy!" cried Master Maylands, a spruce and bold young exquisite. "Well met, well met! Hey, gentles, we'll make a night on't. Captain, you shall captain us, captain!"

"Ay, you shall captain us about the town," put in Master Hawes, who spoke shrilly, and with a lisp, for which he would have been admired had it been affected, but for which he was often ridiculed because it was natural. "You shall teach us to roar as loud as you do. What say you, gallants? Shall we go to school to him to learn roaring? He is the master swaggerer of all that ever swaggered."

The proposal was received with noisy approval, the roysterers gathering around the captain where he sat, and grasping him by the sleeves to draw him along with them.

"Softly, gentlemen, softly," said the captain. "Ye seem of a mind here. But do you consider? There is much I might impart, in the practice of swaggering. Would you in good sooth have me for a tutor?"

There was a chorus of affirmative protestation.

The captain thought it politic to urge a scruple.

"But bethink ye," quoth he, "to be a true swaggerer is no child's play. And you are of delicate rearing, all; meant to play lutes in ladies' chambers; court buds, gallants."

"Why, then," said Maylands, "we shall be gallants and swaggerers, too; an you make swaggerers of us, we will make a gallant of you, will we not, boys?"

"Nay," replied Ravenshaw, "I have been a gallant in my time, and need but the clothes to be one again; and so does my friend here, who is a gentleman and a scholar, though out of favour with fortune. Now there be many tricks in the swaggering trade; the choice of oaths is alone a subtle study, and that is but one branch of many. I'll not be any man's schoolmaster for nothing."

"Faith, man, who asks it?" cried Master Maylands. "We'll pay you. For an earnest, take my cloak; my doublet is thick." He flung the rich broadcloth garment over the captain's uncloaked shoulders. "You need but the clothes to be a gallant again? 'Fore God, I believe it! Tom Hawes, I've cloaked him; you doublet him. Barter your doublet for his jerkin; your cloak will hide it for the night; you've a score of doublets at home."

Master Maylands, in his zeal, fell upon the unobjecting Hawes, and in a trice had helped to effect the transfer, the captain feigning a helpless compliance in the hands of his insistent benefactors. It occurred to another of the youths, Master Clarington, to exchange his jewelled German cap of velvet for Ravenshaw's ragged felt hat; whereupon Master Dauncey, not to be outdone, would have had his breeches untrussed by his link-boy, to bestow upon the captain, but that the captain himself interposed on the score of the cold weather.

"But I'll take it as kindly of you," said Ravenshaw, "if you should have a cloak for my scholar friend. How say you, Master Holyday? Thou'lt be one of us? Thou'lt be a swaggering gallant, too?"

Master Holyday, inwardly thanking his stars for the benevolent impulse which had made him share the fowl, and so elicit this gratitude, would have agreed to anything under the moon (except to woo a woman) for the sake of warmer clothes.

"Yes, sir," said he, with his wonted studious gravity of manner; "if these gentlemen will be so gracious."

The gentlemen were readily so gracious. After a few rapid exchanges, which they treated as a great piece of mirth, they beheld the scholar also cloaked and richly doubleted and hatted. He wore his fine garments with a greater sense of their comfort than of his improved appearance, yet with a somewhat pleasant scholastic grace.

The captain strutted a little way down the street, to enjoy the effect of his new cloak; but, as he stepped into Cheapside, the moon was clouded, and he could no longer see the garment tailing out finely over his sword behind. A distant sound of plodding feet made him look westward in Cheapside, and he saw a few dim lanterns approaching from afar.

"Lads, the watch is coming," said he. "Shall we tarry here, and be challenged for night-walkers?"

"Marry," quoth Master Maylands, leaping forward to the captain's side, "we shall take our first lesson in swaggering now; we shall beat the watch."

"As good a piece of swaggering gallantry as any," said the captain. "Come, my hearts!"

And he led the way along Cheapside toward the approaching watchmen.