"And pray you, sir, what is the matter they set forth?" the landlady ventured to inquire.
"This seems the story of a ghost returned to earth to make discovery of his murder—" the stranger was beginning to explain, but Mistress Hodges checked him.
"Marry!" she cried, "such things be profanations and heresy against the Protestant religion, which Heaven defend. Marry, 'twould go ill with the poor woman who should offer such idolatries for sale."
More protestations followed, prompted, no doubt, by fear lest disloyalty to the dominant party be charged against her; to prove her detestation of the documents she declared her purpose to burn the last of them unread.
"Still better, shift responsibility to me," suggested the stranger, smiling grimly at her zeal. "Sell me the lot for two shillings and sixpence, and my word for it the transaction shall be kept a secret. The reading of these idle fancies will serve as a relaxation from my own employment."
"Marry, they shall be yours and willingly," cried the woman, glad to be rid of dangerous property on such generous terms. And it was thus that the stranger became possessor of the chest of manuscripts. His bargaining for the lodgings proved him a man of thrift to the point of meanness, a quality not to be despised in lodgers, for, as Mistress Hodges often said to Mistress Judd, "Gentlemen are ever most liberal who least mean to pay." In answer to reasonable inquiries he would say no more than, "My predecessor was known as Master Christopher; let me be, therefore, Master Francis, a poor scholar who promises only to take himself off before his purse is empty."
The new lodger entered into possession of his chamber on the afternoon of the day on which he saw it first. His luggage, brought thither by two porters on a single barrow, and consisting chiefly of books and manuscripts, proved him to be the humble student he had represented himself, and in a week his neighbors were agreed in rating him a rather commonplace recluse. His days were spent in reverie by the open window or in writing at the parchment-littered table. If he stirred abroad at all it was but for an hour in the long twilight after supper, and his candle rarely burned later than ten o'clock. It was not until a fortnight had gone by that Mistress Hodges had the satisfaction of announcing a visitor.
"Come in!" cried Master Francis, responding to her knock at his chamber door, and not a little surprised by a summons so unusual, for the remnants of his supper had been removed, and he was himself preparing for his evening stroll.
"A gentleman attends below, an't please you, sir," she announced, entering hurriedly.
"Impossible!" her lodger protested, "for how should a visitor inquire for one who has no name?"