"Ho! ho!" said Martin, with a shrewd look. "La! you there now. Come, tell us the when, the where, and the how, Lady Charlotte. Let us have the circumstances under which this sonnet was written, since yon confess to so much knowledge of the matter."
"Nay, Martin," said Charlotte, blushing; "it was by accident I discovered so much. Walter and myself had been walking under the shade of the tall trees at the end of the garden, when I observed the youth standing, with arms folded, and gazing upon us in the arbour at its extremity. As we leisurely approached him, I saw him tear a leaf from a small book he held in his hand, and write something in it. When we entered the arbour and joined him, in putting up his book, he dropped the stray leaf, upon which he had been writing, and I own I was wicked enough to let it lie, and secure it after he had left us."
"Well," said Sir Hugh, "the lad is certainly a youth of merit, and I feel bound to befriend him in what I can. We must bethink us, Walter, in what way we can serve him materially."
"He is at present, as he tells me," said Arderne, "a clerk or writer in the service of Lawyer Grasp; albeit he liketh not the drudgery and confinement of such a life."
"I wonder not thereat," said Sir Hugh; "since to sentence a lad of so much genius to be a scrivener's clerk, is like putting my best bred palfrey into a mill, or shutting up a soaring falcon in a thrush's cage. We must do something for him, Walter, for we owe much to him."
Such were the kind intentions of the good Sir Hugh towards one to whom he felt under considerable obligations, and doubtless he who had caused those grateful feelings would have felt the benefit of them from one so well off in the world. "Wishing well, however, hath not a body in it;" and our intents of to-day are oft-times marred by the events of to-morrow.
The promises of the powerful are oft-times a sort of "satire upon the softness of prosperity;" and in a few days the good Sir Hugh was himself involved in difficulties which made him oblivious of all, save honourable extrication from their labyrinth.
The conversation which had taken place regarding the sonnet, occurred on the day following that on which young Shakespeare had left the Hall: a day made more memorable to two of the inmates, from the circumstance of the unwelcome visit of Gilbert Parry, and which it is our purpose now again to refer to, in order to explain certain other matters appertaining.
It will doubtless be remembered by our readers that the shrewd Martin had played the spy upon the insane conspirator, and succeeded in making himself complete master of his horrid and perilous intentions. Intentions, the more dangerous to all who were in the slightest degree implicated, as the bloody designs and desperate projects which were suspected to be in existence against the Queen on all sides, had determined Elizabeth's council to make terrible examples of all whom they might discover. To the good Sir Hugh, however, the danger likely to accrue to his own person was the least consideration; and when the faithful Martin, accordingly, on the following morning, informed him of the intentions of the visitor and his own suspicions of his sanity, the good knight was struck with consternation. It was early morning when Martin told his tale to his patron, and when the old knight having just descended, was making the round of his kennel and falconry, and the relation at once filled him with terror, pity, and indignation.
"I will incontinently visit this dangerous caitiff," he said, "and if I find matters as bad as you say, I will take means to secure him and prevent mischief. If he be indeed mad, it is my duty, as a Christian man, to lay him under restraint; but if he be sane and resolved on such attempt, I swear to thee I will arrest him with my own hand, and deliver him over to justice."