"A saw un, mistress, sitting in the kitchen wi' two bottles o' Spanish wine. Ask the player else." "The player! What player?" "Him as was drinking wi' him. Each cracked his bottle, and 'twas nip and tuck which should call first for the second." So Guy had spent the evening--those hours when she was tenderly dreaming of him with love renewed--drinking and carousing with some dissolute actor! Within her Phoebe Wise and Mary Burton struggled for mastery of her opinion. What more natural than that a poor lad, tired with waiting on his feet for hours for one look from the mistress who disdained him, should seek to forget his troubles quaffing good wine in the company of some witty player? This was Mary's view. What! To leave the presence of his sweetheart--the girl to whom he had just written that penitent letter--to go fresh from the inspiration of all that should uplift a lover, and befuddle his brains with "rum," gossiping with some coarse-grained barn-stormer! So Phoebe railed. "Who was the player?" she asked, sharply. "Him as wore the long white beard," said the boy. "The Jew, to wit. Eh, but a got his cess, the runnion!" "Shylock!" she cried, in spite of herself. So this was the gossiping barn-stormer, the dissolute actor. Will Shakespeare it was with whom her Guy had spent the evening! Phoebe Wise could but capitulate, and Mary Burton took for a time triumphant possession of the heart that was Guy Fenton's. "Have the players left the Peacock?" she asked, eagerly. "Nay, mistress, know you not that they play to-night at the home of Sir William Percy?" "Then they are here, at the inn, boy?" "A saw him that played the Jew i' the garden not a half hour since. He's wont to wander there and mutter the words of the play. I'll warrant him there now, mistress." Here, indeed, was good fortune! Shakespeare was in the garden. He should tell her where to find Guy that she might warn him. Quickly she turned away and hurried out of the yard and around the north L, beyond which was the garden, laid out with ancient hedges and long beds of old-fashioned flowers. Now this same garden was the chief pride of the neighborhood, the more especially that gardens were but seldom found attached to inns in those days. Here there had been a partly successful attempt to imitate Italian landscape gardening; but the elaborately arranged paths, beds, and parterres, with their white statues and fountains, lost their effectiveness closed in as they were by high walls of vine-covered brick. It was rumored that once a stately peacock had here once flaunted his gorgeous plumage, giving his name to the inn itself--but this legend rested upon little real evidence. When Phoebe reached the entrance to the main walk she stopped and looked anxiously about her. Nowhere could she see or hear anyone. Sadly disappointed, she moved slowly forward, glancing quickly to right and left, still hoping that he whom she sought had not utterly departed.