"They paid the score below--I saw them; and this thy son charged me to hand to thee." The apprentice drew a full purse from his pocket and flung it on the table. "I--I played thee a trick, master: but let me forth into fresh air. This room dizzies me...." "Go thy ways--go thy ways, child. For my part I was ever last at a feast to leave it, and would crack one more cup with these good folk. To your health, Madam!" He reached a hand for the wine-flask as the apprentice set it down and went forth, tottering yet. VII Dawn was breaking down the river; a grey dawn as yet, albeit above the mists rolling low upon the tideway a clear sky promised gold to come--a golden Christmas Day. The mist, however, had a chill which searched the bones. The red-eyed waterman pulled as though his arms were numb. Tom Nashe coughed and huddled his cloak about him, as he turned for a last backward glance on Bankside, where a few lights yet gleamed, and the notes of a belated guitar tinkled on, dulled by the vapours, calling like a thin ghost above the deeper baying of the hounds. "Take care of thyself, lad," said Shakespeare kindly, stretching out a hand to help his friend draw the cloak closer. "Behoved me think of that sooner, I doubt," Nashe answered, glancing up with a wry, pathetic smile, yet gratefully. He dropped his eyes to the cloak and quoted-- "_Sometime it was of cloth-in-grain, 'Tis now but a sigh-clout, as you may see; It will hold out neither wind nor rain_-- and--and--I thank thee, Will---- _But I'll take my old cloak about me._ There's salt in the very warp of it, good Yarmouth salt. Will?" "Ay, lad?" "Is't true thou'rt become a landowner, down in thy native shire?" "In a small way, Tom." "A man of estate? with coat-of-arms and all?" "Even that too, with your leave." "I know--I know. _Nescio qua natale solum_--those others did not understand: but I understood. Yes, and now I understand that fifth act of thine, which puzzled me afore, and yet had not puzzled me; but I fancied--poor fool!--that the feeling was singular in me. 'Twas a vile life, Will." He jerked a thumb back at Bankside. "Ay, 'tis vile." "My cough translates it into the past tense; but--then, or now, or hereafter--'tis vile. Count them up, Will--the lads we have drunk with aforetime. There was Greene, now----" Shakespeare bent his head for tally. "--I can see his poor corse staring up at the rafters: there on the shoemaker's bed, with a chaplet of laurel askew on the brow. The woman meant it kindly, poor thing!... She forgot to close his eyes, though. With my own fingers I closed 'em, and borrowed two penny pieces of her for weights. 'Twas the first dead flesh I had touched, and I feel it now.... But George Peele was worse, ten times worse. I forget if you saw him?" Again Shakespeare bent his head.