To be sure, they little knew on how slender a thread it hung. Not ten yards from them, during the whole time in which this comedy had been played, a man stood marking sourly every phase of the proceedings. He could have undone them with a word. The word, however, was not spoken. Grisewood judged the hour to be not yet. Still, he had marked very closely all that had passed. And he had been at pains to make himself fully acquainted with the matter in all its details. There and then, he could have laid his finger on the man these blundering rustics sought. But that would not have suited his purpose at the moment. For he was too astute not to realize the immense advantage his knowledge gave him, and far too cunning not to be fully determined to take some high profit out of it. CHAPTER XXX NO time was lost now in moving out of Oxford. Within an hour of Justice Pretyman’s visit, the Lord Chamberlain’s men were on their way to London. They were accompanied by Gervase and Anne, who were still disguised as the Italian music master and his son, and also by the falconer, John Markham. None of them was aware that, less than a mile behind, rode Sir Robert Grisewood and his two servants. The players traveled that night as far as Reading, where they lay, and reached Southwark without misadventure in the course of the following afternoon, which was Sunday. Shakespeare felt a keen sense of relief when he had placed the fugitives in the comfort and security of his lodgings on the Bankside, which he shared with his friend Burbage. The tragedian, on his own part, it must be confessed, was terrible uneasy of mind. He knew the situation to be one of great peril and difficulty. And he viewed with a feeling little short of horror Shakespeare’s determination to concern himself with a matter of high treason. He had a deep pity for the fugitives, but he felt how futile and how perilous it was for men such as themselves to mingle in their sinister affairs. Parflete had been left at Oxford, as he was in no condition to travel. And over the question of a substitute for that unlucky young actor, the author and the manager came to the verge of a quarrel. Shakespeare kept to his determination that Anne should play _Rosalind_ in the new comedy, while Burbage affirmed that it was contrary to all precedent and was courting disaster. In spite of this, however, the author began at once to instruct Anne in the part. And she brought to her study a keenness of grasp and a quickness of apprehension that delighted her mentor. Her progress was very rapid under his wise guidance. In two days, she was almost word perfect. Moreover, she discovered a natural faculty for acting which she shared in common with her sex. All her gestures were simple, unforced, appropriate; and her bearing had an ease and grace that Parflete himself could not have equaled.