Nick stepped down from the tap-room door. His ears were tingling with the sound: “I’m off hot-foot with the news to Will’s.”
“Hot-foot with the news to Will’s”?
To “Will’s”? “Will” who?
The man was a player, by his air.
Nick hurriedly looked around. Carew’s wild eyes were frozen upon the dice. The bandy-legged man was drinking at a table near the door. The crimson ribbon in his ear looked like a patch of blood.
He saw Nick looking at him, and made a horrible face. He would have sworn likewise, but there was half a quart of ale in his can; so he turned it up and drank instead. It was a long, long drink, and half his face was buried in the pot.
When he put it down the boy was gone.
CHAPTER XXXI
IN THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE
In a garden near the old bear-yard, among tall rose-trees which would soon be in bloom, a merry company of men were sitting around a table which stood in the angle of a quick-set hedge beside a path graveled with white stones and bordered with mussel-shells.