swinish rage. "There are other rooms for love-making," and he jerked
his thumb towards the roof. "We are here for drinking; we are here
for dicing; to the devil with smocks and sonnets."

He jumbled the ivories lustily as he growled and the familiar jingle
banished unfamiliar fancies. He slapped the spotted cubes on the
table and as they rolled into equilibrium eager eyes counted them,
and fingers eager or reluctant pinched or pushed at coins. The spell
of the music was broken. The melodious Abbess, with eyes now
glittering and tearless, swung her supple body from table to bench,
thrust herself a place among the players, shouted to Robin Turgis to
bring more wine, and spreading some silver on the dingy board
surrendered to speculation. Nobody heeded the faint clink which told
that a hand troubled the latch of the street door; nobody heeded the
faint creaking which showed that it was being softly opened; nobody
heeded the man who put his head gently through the opening and
looked thoughtfully around him. The new-comer was a grim-visaged
fellow, somewhere near the edge of middle age. He was dressed in the
sober habit of a simple burgess, and he used the long fold that hung
from his cloth cap very dexterously to hide his face. He peered into
the obscurity of the room with a disquieting smile that deepened in
its unpleasing expression as its owner surveyed the noisy fellowship
in the corner, and nodded his head as he seemed to identify its
members. Confident that nobody marked him he stealthily entered the
room, and holding the door ajar, he motioned to one who still stood
without to enter. The summons was answered by the entrance of
another figure, capped and habited like the first, who slipped in
swiftly and furtively, and made at once for the farthest and
loneliest angle of the room without looking to right or left, while
his herald, after closing the door as noiselessly as possible,