“It’s a fine thing, I grant you, when it rides proud in the sight of heaven,” said the player abstractedly. “Aye, Master Shakespeare, and even when it goes afoot!” said the tailor, whose mind was more pedestrian. “It does a man good, I always think, to have a sight of the quality now and again. But as I say, Master Shakespeare, it is nothing to you who go to Court like a gentleman.” But the part-proprietor of the Globe Theatre was not heeding the words of his friend. The light that never was on sea or land had come into those somber eyes. Suddenly his hand struck the tailor’s counter a great blow. “That is an adorable miniard,” he said. “By my soul, if Gloriana requires a comedy, here is matter for a comedy for Gloriana!” CHAPTER III IN the meantime, the unconscious cause of Mr. William Shakespeare’s enthusiasm was proceeding somewhat arrogantly through the streets of the town. Mistress Anne Feversham was mightily proud of herself, of her young blood-horse, of her pied merlin, above all of her brand-new hawking-breeches, which she had had the audacity to copy from two particularly dashing ladies of the Court who had accompanied the Queen on her recent visit to Nottingham. As for John Markham, she was proud of him too. He made a fine squire. But nothing would have induced her to let him know it. None the less surely was he subdued to her purposes. A wise fellow in all things else, he was the true knight, the ready slave of his young mistress. And his young mistress was imperious. High temper was in every clean-run line of her. It was in the eye, a thing of mist and fire, gloriously placed like that of one of Leonardo’s ladies. It was in the nose, curved like the beak of her merlin; in the delicate molding of the chin and mouth, in the slender column of the throat, in the poise of the head, in the supple assurance of the body which ruled a beast of mettle and goaded it into setting up its will for the pleasure of subduing it. John Markham, with a head beyond his years, was passing wise for his station. He was no ordinary servant, but one high in the regard of Sir John Feversham, the Constable of Nottingham Castle, that grim pile half-a-mile off, rising sheer from its rock in the midst of the water-meadows. Learned in hawking, he was esteemed by gentle and simple for many a mile. His skill in the craft of princes had even carried his fame as far as Belvoir, under whose shadow he had been bred. He was a shrewd, a skilful, a bold young fellow, wise in all things except that he worshiped the ground upon which his young mistress trod.