"The malt, lad, the malt! His brewhouse swallowed malt at twenty-eight or nine which a short two years before had cost him twelve-and-threepence the quarter. A year of dearth, I say. It took poor Dick at unawares. But give him time: he will pull round. Sure, we be slow in the country, but you have some in this town that will beat us. How many years, lad, have I been battering the doors of Heralds' College for that grant of arms, promised ere my beard was grey and yours fully grown?" "Malt at twenty-eight, you say?" "Last year, lad--a year of dearth. Call it a good twenty in these bettering times, and wheat anything under forty-five shillings." "Well, we will talk it over." His son seemed to come out of a brown study. "We will talk it over," he repeated briskly, and added, "How? The chimney overleaning the road? 'Twas a stout enough chimney, as I remember, and might have lasted another twenty years. Where did you draw the bricks?" Nashe glanced at his friend with a puzzled smile. Burbage--better used, no doubt, to the businesslike ways of authors--betrayed no surprise. The apprentice stared, scarcely believing his ears. Was this the talk of Shakespeare? Nay, rather the talk of Justice Shallow himself--"How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford Fair?" "How a score of ewes now?" A heavy tread approached from the gateway. "Are we to bide here all night, and on Christmas morn, too?" a gruff voice demanded. "Unpack, and pay us our wage, or we tip the whole load of it into Thames." Here the wagoner's shin encountered in the darkness with a plank, and he cursed violently. "Go you back to your horses, my friend," answered Burbage. "The unloading shall begin anon. As for your wage, your master will tell you I settled it at the time I bargained for his wagons--ay, and paid. I hold his receipt." "For tenpence a man--mowers' wages," growled the wagoner. "I asked him his price and he fixed it. 'Tis the current rate, I understand, and a trifle over." "Depends on the job. I've been talkin' with my mates, and we don't like it. We're decent labouring men, and shifting a lot of play-actors' baggage don't come in our day's work. I'd as lief wash dirty linen for my part. Therefore," the fellow wound up lucidly, "you'll make it twelvepence a head, master. We don't take a groat less." "I see," said Burbage blandly: "twopence for salving your conscience, hey? And so, being a decent man, you don't stomach players?" "No, nor the Bankside at this hour o' night. I live clean, I tell you." "'Tis a godless neighbourhood and a violent." Burbage drew a silver whistle from his doublet and eyed it. "Listen a moment, master wagoner, and tell me what you hear." "I hear music o' sorts. No Christmas carols, I warrant." "Aught else?" "Ay: a sound like a noise of dogs baying over yonder."