He turned and once more laid a hand upon the latch.
"But," protested Master Francis, "I have still to find the hundred pounds——"
"A riddle for diplomacy to solve!" replied the Lord Treasurer of England, laughing sardonically. "I can tell you no more than that you shall not find it in my purse!" And so saying, he strode from the room, leaving the door wide open.
For many minutes Master Francis paced the floor, muttering to himself, now angry imprecations at his own folly, now curses on the relentless arrogance of the Lord Treasurer. As the long twilight of the season fell he caught up his wide-brimmed hat and hurried from the house.
He took his way through narrow winding streets, and after several turnings came at length to one much wider, a thoroughfare lined with little shops, whose owners when not occupied with customers stood on their thresholds soliciting the patronage of passers-by.
"What do you lack?" they cried; "hats, shoes, or hosiery; gloves, ruffs, or farthingales?" each setting forth the value of his wares in frantic effort to outshout competitors. Along the pavement worthy citizens sauntered with wives and sweethearts, or stood in interested groups about some mountebank or maker of music performing upon several ill-tuned instruments at once. On a patch of trodden grass young men played noisy games of bowls until a gilded coach in passing wantonly destroyed their goal. Here a bout with single-stick was in progress, there a contest with bare fists which must have grown serious had not the watch arrived in time to separate the belligerents with their pikes. But the centre of most interest was a seafaring man who smoked a long-stemmed pipe with rather ostentatious unconcern. The men regarded him with furtive admiration, the women disapprovingly, while children ran to catch a whiff of the strange aromatic scent. When he blew puffs of vapor from his nostrils everybody laughed.
Master Francis, moving hastily aside to make way for the smoker and his escort, came into collision with a man of his own age, whose broad good-humored face showed due appreciation of the scene.
"What think you, friend?" the stranger asked, laughing. "Will this new savagery become an institution? Have we been at such pains to banish smoke from our churches only to turn our heads into censers? Mayhap this be another Popish plot?"
"It seems to me a bit of arrant folly," Master Francis answered somewhat listlessly, "and as such, certain to become the rage."
"They tell us it will prolong the life," went on the other, "for it is well known a herring when smoked outlasts a fresh one."