The visitor shook his head. ‘Nothing, but wherever, in the country round, Shakespeare’s youth is alluded to, this story of his friend is told. It is a local legend, that is all; but it seems to me to have life in it. The world outside knows nothing of it. It interests itself in Shakespeare only, and but little in his belongings; but with us, breathing the air he breathed, walking on the same ground he trod, things are different; we still fancy him amongst us, and not alone. There is Hamnet, too; we still speak of Hamnet.’ It was fortunate for William Henry that he repressed the observation that rose to his lips. He was about to say, ‘You don’t mean Hamlet, do you?’ The same idea I am afraid occurred to Mr. Dennis, but for even a briefer space; he felt that there must be some mistake somewhere; but also that he himself might be making it. ‘Buried here, August the 11th, 1596,’ observed Mr. Erin, as though he was reading from the register itself. ‘Just so,’ continued Jervis, ‘only a little over two hundred years ago. He was eleven years old, too young to understand the greatness of him who begat him, yet old enough to have an inkling of it. Once a year or so, as it is believed, his father came home to Stratford fresh from the companionship of the great London wits and poets—Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Camden, and Selden. What meetings must those have been with his only son; the boy whom he fondly hoped, but hoped in vain, would inherit the proceeds of his fame! I wonder how his mother used to speak of her husband to her children? Did she excuse to them his long absence, his dwelling afar off, or did she inveigh against it? Did she recognise the splendour of his genius, or did she only love him? Or did she not love him?’ ‘Let us hope she was not unworthy of him,’ said Mr. Erin, his enthusiasm, stirred by the other’s eloquence, rising on a stronger wing than usual. ‘As a wife she was sorely tried,’ murmured Mr. Jervis. ‘I love to think of her less than of Hamnet, so lowly born in one sense, and in the other of such illustrious parentage. The news of his father’s growing fame must have reached the boy, and the contrast could not fail to have struck him. Then to have seen that father bending over his little bed, to have kissed that noble face, and felt himself in his embrace; to have known that he was the child whom Shakespeare’s soul loved best in all the world, what a sensation, what an experience!’ ‘Some mementoes of the immortal bard are, I hope, still to be purchased?’ observed Mr. Erin curtly. He had engaged Mr. Jervis’s services for practical purposes, and began to resent this waste of time—which was money—upon sentimental hypothesis. Shakespeare’s wife was a topic one could sympathise with; there was documentary evidence in existence concerning her, but over little Hamnet’s grave there was not even a tombstone.