“Huff, ruff, and snuff!” the other replied. “Don’t get the mubble-fubbles, Carew: there’s nought the matter with the dice.”
A man came down from the tap-room door. Nick stepped aside to let him pass. He was a player, by his air.
He wore a riding-cloak of Holland cloth, neither so good nor so bad as a riding-cloak might be, but under it a handsome jerkin overlaid with lace, and belted with a buff girdle in which was a light Spanish rapier. His boots were russet cordovan, mid-thigh tall, and the rowels of his clinking spurs were silver stars. He was large of frame, and his curly hair was short and brown; so was his pointed beard. His eyes were singularly bright and fearless, and bluff self-satisfaction marked his stride; but his under lip was petulant, and he flicked his boot with his riding-whip as he shouldered his way along.
“Ye cannot miss the place, sir,” called the tapster after him. “’Tis just beyond Ned Alleyn’s, by the ditch. Ye’ll never mistake the ditch, sir—Billingsgate is roses to it.”
“Oh, I’ll find it fast enough,” the stranger answered; “but he should have sent to meet me, knowing I might come at any hour. ’Tis a felon place for thieves; and I’ve not heart to skewer even a goose on such a night as this.”
At the sudden breaking of voices upon the silence, Carew looked up, with a quarrel ripe for picking in his eye. But seeing who spoke, such a smile came rippling from the corners of his mouth across his dark, unhappy face that it was as if a lamp of welcome had been lighted there. “What, Ben!” he cried; “thou here? Why, bless thine heart, old gossip, ’tis good to see an honest face amid this pack of rogues.”
There was a surly muttering in the crowd. Carew threw his head back haughtily and set his knuckles to his hip. “A pack of rogues, I say,” he repeated sharply; “and a fig for the whole pack!” There was a certain wildness in his eyes. No one stirred or made reply.
“Good! Gaston,” laughed the stranger, with a shrug; “picking thy company still, I see, for quantity, and not for quality. No, thank ’e; none of the tap for me. My Lord Hunsdon was made chamberlain in his father’s stead to-day, and I’m off hot-foot with the news to Will’s.”
He gathered his cloak about him, and was gone.
“Ye’ve lost,” said the man who was dicing with Carew.