Richard Burbage replied to none of these. He stood an instant swaying, his ashen face framed in the eerie glow of the candles. And then without a further word he turned and passed like a ghost through the door of the room with the same abruptness with which he had entered it. He went headlong, stumbling and creaking, down the ricketty stairs of the old tavern and out into the July evening. In the street, hard by the signboard, under the shadow of the tavern wall, two men lay in wait for the tragedian. One of these was his fellow-player, William Kemp, the other John Heming the manager of the Globe Theatre. These also were men of strong feelings, but they had them under control, whereas Richard Burbage who might almost be said to worship the ground on which the poet trod, had been carried completely away by this direst of tragedies, which he knew not how to face. As became good men, true friends, staunch comrades, Kemp and Heming were fully determined not to let Burbage pass out of their sight during the remainder of that night. But they must not show themselves in his. Already he had resented their presence fiercely, had cursed them when they had sought to console him, and had so far fallen from that poise of mind and temper which at ordinary times made him a most agreeable companion, as to threaten to do them violence, “if they would not have the goodness to keep themselves to themselves and stand out of his light.” Thus William Kemp and John Heming remained well in the shadow of the tavern wall. But when their distracted friend came out of the inn, perhaps a little sooner than they had expected him to do so, they proceeded to follow him at a respectful distance. Without betraying their own presence, they contrived to keep him well in view. Certainly there was very good ground for such solicitude. The tragedian swayed about from side to side like a ship in a gale, now up one deserted street, now down another. And all these dark purlieus of the city swarmed with perils at that hour of the night. Moreover, the ostensible condition of this pedestrian, the vagaries of whose gait certainly resembled those of a man far gone in liquor, seemed to cry aloud for the attentions of the vigilant cutpurse or the lurking footpad. With unseeing eyes, with unstable limbs, with mind insensible of its surroundings, with steps not knowing whither they were bent, the tragedian walked the byways of the city during the whole of that night. Like the fate-riven figures in those soul-shaking tragedies in whose delineation he excelled all men, he was at the mercy of an anguish of mind that was tearing him in pieces.