“Then let him show it as he goes along,” said Attwood, grimly, as he blew the candle out. But May-day dawned; mid-morning came, mid-afternoon, then supper-time again; and supper-time crept into dusk—and still no Nicholas Attwood. His mother grew uneasy; but his father only growled: “We’ll reckon up when he cometh home. Master Brunswood tells me he was na at the school the whole day yesterday—and he be feared to show his face. I’ll _fear_ him with a bit of birch!” “Do na be too hard with the lad, Simon,” pleaded Mistress Attwood. “Who knows what hath happened to him? He must be hurt, or he’d ’a’ come home to his mother”—and she began to wring her hands. “He may ha’ fallen from a tree, and lieth all alone out on the hill—or, Simon, the Avon! Thou dost na think our lad be drowned?” “Fudge!” said Simon Attwood. “Born to hang’ll never drown!” When, however, the next day crept around and still his son did not come home, a doubt stole into the tanner’s own heart. Yet when his wife was for starting out to seek some tidings of the boy, he stopped her wrathfully. “Nay, Margaret,” said he; “thou shalt na go traipsing around the town like a hen wi’ but one chick. I wull na ha’ thee made a laughing-stock by all the fools in Stratford.” But as the third day rolled around, about the middle of the afternoon the tanner himself sneaked out at the back door of his tannery in Southam’s lane, and went up into the town. “Robin Getley,” he asked at the guildschool door, “was my son wi’ thee overnight?” “Nay, Master Attwood. Has he not come back?” “Come back? From where?” Robin hung his head. “From, where?” demanded the tanner. “Come, boy!” “From Coventry,” said Robin, knowing that the truth would out at last, anyway. “He went to see the players, sir,” spoke up Hal Saddler, briskly, not heeding Robin’s stealthy kick. “He said he’d bide wi’ Diccon Haggard overnight; an’ he said he wished he were a master-player himself, sir, too.” Simon Attwood, frowning blackly, hurried on. It _was_ Nick, then, whom he had seen crossing the market-square. Wat Raven, who swept Clopton bridge, had seen two boys go up the Warwick road. “One were thy Nick, Muster Attwood,” said he, thumping the dirt from his broom across the coping-stone, “and the other were Dawson’s Hodge.” The angry tanner turned again into the market-place. His brows were knit, and his eyes were hot, yet his step was heavy and slow. Above all things, he hated disobedience, yet in his surly way he loved his only son; and far worse than disobedience, he hated that _his_ son should disobey. Astride a beam in front of Master Thompson’s house sat Roger Dawson. Simon Attwood took him by the collar none too gently. “Here, leave be!” choked Roger, wriggling hard; but the tanner’s grip was like iron. “Wert thou in Coventry May-day?” he asked sternly. “Nay, that I was na,” sputtered Hodge. “A plague on Coventry!” “Do na lie to me—thou wert there wi’ my son Nicholas.”