I4 PROLOGUE
here again Sir William's moderate and friendly rule did not
prohibit the dance, although he had a sharp word for any whose
"behaviour on these occasions seemed to call for correction. The
measures were simple, and were trodden with an unaffected
grace which seemed to recall a happier and more innocent age—
far removed from the toil and difficulties of everyday life. Young
men and maidens with linked hands went through the evolutions
of the dance and smiled one at the other, and il dallied with the
innocence of love". Yet, even so, there were sonic matrons who
looked on with but half-approving eye, as if underneath the
seeming innocence there lurked who knew what dangers? Agnes,
partly from native prudery and partly as Sir William's sister,
would not let Alice join in the dances, although her friends called
to her from time to time, and she darted envious eyes on Joan
and Cicely as they moved in concert to the music. Kven while
they stood there the airs seemed to grow a little less restrained,
and very soon Alice and her mother moved away towards home.
The dances, however, went on, and as dusk fell and journeys
to the ale-house on the edge of the green became inure common,
the shrill cries of the rebeck were answered by the shrill cries
and laughter of the girls, and by the lower laughter and snatches of
song of some of the men. John watched all this with an indulgent
eye, and sat for a while with some of his cronies on the ale-house
bench, and listened to the shouts and sounds of revelry coming
from within the devil's chapel, as a friar had once called it, in a
sermon which told of how three men, after drinking and dicing
there, had set off to find Death so that they might slay him, and
of what had befallen them. The noise within grew louder: * * there
was laughing and lowering, and 'let the cup go*'*, and at last
Clement Cooke, notorious in the village for his inability to carry
his liquor, got up to go
. * .like a gleeman's bitch,
Sometimes aside and sometimes backwards,
Like one who lays lures to lime wild-fowl.
As he drew to the door all dimmed before him,
He stumbled on the threshold and was thrown forwards.