"'Tis but a chest of papers left by my last lodger, one Master Christopher," Mistress Hodges explained, adding, "A poet, sir, an't please you, who was slain by highwaymen, and I know not if his lines be fitted for honest ears to hear, though, an one might believe it, they have been spoken in the public play-house. Think you," she added, raising the lid of the chest to disclose a dozen manuscripts or more, bound together with bits of broken doublet lacing, "the lot would bring as much as ten shillings at the rag fair?" The stranger laughed and shook his head. "'Tis a great price for any dead man's thoughts," he said, taking up a package at random and hastily turning over the leaves, while Mistress Hodges regarded him anxiously. His interest deepened as he read, and presently his eyes devoured page after page, oblivious of the other's presence. "In truth," he said at length, "there be lines not wholly without merit." "And pray you, sir, what is the matter they set forth?" the landlady ventured to inquire. "This seems the story of a ghost returned to earth to make discovery of his murder--" the stranger was beginning to explain, but Mistress Hodges checked him. "Marry!" she cried, "such things be profanations and heresy against the Protestant religion, which Heaven defend. Marry, 'twould go ill with the poor woman who should offer such idolatries for sale." More protestations followed, prompted, no doubt, by fear lest disloyalty to the dominant party be charged against her; to prove her detestation of the documents she declared her purpose to burn the last of them unread. "Still better, shift responsibility to me," suggested the stranger, smiling grimly at her zeal. "Sell me the lot for two shillings and sixpence, and my word for it the transaction shall be kept a secret. The reading of these idle fancies will serve as a relaxation from my own employment." "Marry, they shall be yours and willingly," cried the woman, glad to be rid of dangerous property on such generous terms. And it was thus that the stranger became possessor of the chest of manuscripts. His bargaining for the lodgings proved him a man of thrift to the point of meanness, a quality not to be despised in lodgers, for, as Mistress Hodges often said to Mistress Judd, "Gentlemen are ever most liberal who least mean to pay." In answer to reasonable inquiries he would say no more than, "My predecessor was known as Master Christopher; let me be, therefore, Master Francis, a poor scholar who promises only to take himself off before his purse is empty."