thou up to now?"

"I be up to no folly at all," said Nick, "but down, sir. I fell from the
stool. There is no harm done."

"Then be about thy business," said Attwood, coming slowly down the
stairs.

He was a gaunt man, smelling of leather and untanned hides. His short
iron-gray hair grew low down upon his forehead, and his hooked nose,
grim wide mouth, and heavy under jaw gave him a look at once forbidding
and severe. His doublet of serge and his fustian hose were stained with
liquor from the vats, and his eyes were heavy with sleep.

The smile faded from Nick's face. "Shall I throw the rushes into the
street, sir?" "Nay; take them to the muck-hill. The burgesses ha' made
a great to-do about folk throwing trash into the highways. Soul and body
o' man!" he growled, "a man must ask if he may breathe. And good hides
going a-begging, too!"

Nick hurried away, for he dreaded his father's sullen moods.

The swine were squealing in their styes, the cattle bawled about the
straw-thatched barns in Chapel lane, and long files of gabbling ducks
waddled hurriedly down to the river through the primroses under the
hedge. He could hear the milkmaids calling in the meadows; and when he
trundled slowly home the smoke was creeping up in pale-blue threads from
the draught-holes in the wall.

The tanner's house stood a little back from the thoroughfare, in that