"Pay and employment, good master mine," said the player.
"Hath he wit?—can he speak?—are his legs strong?—arms pliant?"
"He is young, strong, and of good parts," said the player—"I can avouch it."
"Then will we find him in employment," said the manager; "he shall have charge of the foot-lights, and snuff the lamps." And so Shakespeare became attached to the theatre.
CHAPTER XLII.
MORE STRANGE THAN TRUE.
In a former chapter we have seen Walter Arderne, after many and various adventures by flood and field, returning to the home and haunts of his childhood. The good and gallant youth (although from station and prospects he might reasonably have hoped for ease and happiness in life) had hitherto seemed but a step-son of fortune after all. And now, "like a younker and a prodigal" lean, rent, and tattered, having endured shipwreck and been sold to slavery by the insolent foe, by a sudden freak of fortune was once more safe in Warwickshire and with his beloved uncle at Clopton. The meeting between Sir Hugh and his nephew was extremely affecting. They were now all in all to each other, for both had experienced losses which to both were irreparable. The grief, however, they experienced for past sorrows had now considerably abated, so that they could hold converse upon bygone events and even find benefit from such communion.
Still, when Walter looked around him in his old neighbourhood, like Sir Hugh when he had first returned, he felt at times a sense of desolation which was almost insupportable. The loss of his old and tried friend, the eccentric Martin, was also a heavy blow to him; and in addition to this the absence and delinquency of the singular friend, whose conversation had made so great an impression upon them all during their short acquaintance, especially grieved him. The breath of slander, when he came to inquire into the facts leading to young Shakespeare's departure, had rendered that youth's conduct so reckless and even criminal that Walter was us much surprised as grieved at all he heard.
"It was a good thing," Mr. Doubletongue said, "that the Ne'er-do-well had made off with himself, or the Lord knew what he would be after next. Stealing of deer by night, and catching rabbits by day, would perhaps have been the least part of the story. Nay," he continued, "the lad (albeit he had a most comely female to wife) had as sharp an eye and as devilish a tongue for the lasses in Stratford as—"