Could he but just find Master Shakspere, all his trouble would be over; for the husband of his mother’s own cousin would see justice done him in spite of the master-player and the bandy-legged man with the ribbon in his ear—of that he was sure. But there seemed small chance of its coming about; for the doors of Gaston Carew’s house were locked and barred by day and by night, as much to keep Nick in as to keep thieves out; and all day long, when Carew was away, the servants went about the lower halls, and Gregory Goole’s uncanny face peered after him from every shadowy corner; and when he went with Carew anywhere, the master-player watched him like a hawk, while always at his heels he could hear the clump, clump, clump of the bandy-legged man following after him. Even were he free to go as he pleased, he knew not where to turn; for the Lord Chamberlain’s company would not be at the Blackfriars play-house until Martinmas; and before that time to look for even Master Will Shakspere at random in London town would be worse than hunting for a needle in a haystack. To be sure, he knew that the Lord Chamberlain’s men were still playing at the theater in Shoreditch; for Master Carew had taken Cicely there to see the “Two Gentlemen of Verona.” But just where Shoreditch was, Nick had only the faintest idea—somewhere away off by Finsbury Fields, beyond the city walls to the north of London town—and all the wide world seemed north of London town; and the way thither lay through a bewildering tangle of streets in which the din and the rush of the crowd were never still. From a hopeless chase like that Nick shrank back like a snail into its shell. He was not too young to know that there were worse things than to be locked in Gaston Carew’s house. It were better to be a safe-kept prisoner there than to be lost in the sinks of London. And so, knowing this, he made the best of it. But Master Shakspere was come back to town, and that was something. It seemed somehow less lonely just to think of it. Yet in truth he had but little time to think of it; for the master-player kept him closely at his strange, new work, and taught him daily with the most amazing patience. He had Nick learn no end of stage parts off by heart, with their cues and “business,” entrances and exits; and worked fully as hard as his pupil, reading over every sentence twenty times until Nick had the accent perfectly. He would have him stamp, too, and turn about, and gesture in accordance with the speech, until the boy’s arms ached, going with him through the motions one by one, over and over again, unsatisfied, but patient to the last, until Nick wondered. “Nick, my lad,” he would often say, with a tired but determined smile, “one little thing done wrong may spoil the finest play, as one bad apple rots the barrelful. We’ll have it right, or not at all, if it takes a month of Sundays.”