One of the travellers--a grave man, whose head was sprinkled with the snows of fifty winters--dismounted, and, approaching the door, knocked at it with the steel hilt of his sword. He received no answer; but presently the lattice opened above his head, and a sharp voice sharply asked,-- "Who knocks?" "'Tis I, good wife!" replied the horseman. "Where is thy husband? I would see him!" "Oh, Master John a Combe, is it you? I knew you not. Neither know I where that unthrift William is these two days. It was but three nights gone that he went with Will Squele and Dick Burbage, one of the player folk, to take a deer out of Sir Thomas Lucy's park, and, as Will's ill-luck would have it, they were taken, as well as the deer, and there was great ado. But Will--that's my Will--and Dick Burbage, brake from the keepers in Sir Thomas' very hall, and got off; and that's the last that has been heard of them; and here be I left a lone woman with these three children, and----Be quiet, Hamnet! Would ye pour my supper ale upon the hat of the worshipful Master John a Combe?" "What! deer-stealing?" exclaimed John a Combe. "Is it thus that he apes the follies of his betters? I had more hope of the lad, for he hath a good heart and a quick engine; and I trusted that ere now he had drawn the lease of my Wilmecote farm to Master Tilney here. But deer-stealing!--like a lord's son, or a knight's at the least. Could not the rifling of a rabbit-warren serve his turn? Deer-stealing! I fear me he will come to nought!" The speaker remounted, and soon the two horsemen might again have been seen wending their way back through the deepening twilight. * * * * *