"Can any one tell me her name, now?" repeated John Shakespeare, rolling to the table and pouring himself yet another glass of wine. But no one answered him. The snake-woman had folded back her pets within her bodice and resumed her meal as though nothing had happened. The burly drummer had chosen a chair beside her and fallen to on the remains of a pasty. Both were eating voraciously. Francisco, the pipe-player, sat sidesaddle-wise on a form at a little distance and drank and watched them, still with the horror in his eyes. One or two women lingered, and searched the tables, pocketing crusts--searched with faces such as on battlefields, at dawn, go peering among the dead and wounded. "But hullo!" John Shakespeare swung round, glass in hand, as the apprentice stood panting in the doorway. "Faith, you return before I had well missed you." The lad's eyes twinkled with mischief. "An thou hasten not, master, I fear me thou may'st miss higher game; with our hosts--your son amongst 'em--even now departing by boat and, for aught I know, leaving thee to pay the shot." "Michael and all his angels preserve us! I had forgot----" John Shakespeare clapped a hand on his empty pocket, and ran for the stairhead. "Will!" he bawled. "Will! My son Will!" The apprentice laughed and stepped toward the window, tittuping slightly; for (to tell the truth) he had drunk more wine than agreed with him. Standing by the window, he laughed again vacuously, drew a long breath, and so spun round on his heels at the sound of a choking cry and a rush of feet. With that he saw, as in a haze--his head being yet dizzy--the heavy man catch up his drum by its strap and, using it as a shield, with a backward sweep of the arm hurl off the youth Francisco, who had leapt on him knife in hand. Clutching the curtain, he heard the knife rip through the drum's parchment and saw the young man's face of hate as the swift parry flung him back staggering, upsetting a form, against the table's edge. He saw the glasses there leap and totter from the shock, heard their rims jar and ring together like a peal of bells.