heavy horseman's cloak and the long boots
splashed with the mud of the Colne fords. He had been busy all day with
legal matters--conveyances on which his opinion was sought, for, though
it was the Christmas vacation, his fame among the City merchants kept
him busy in term and out of it. Rarely, he thought, had he known London
in so strange a temper. Men scarcely dared to speak above their breath
of public things, and eyed him fearfully--even the attorneys who licked
his boots--as if a careless word spoken in his presence might be
their ruin. For it was known that this careful lawyer stood very near
Cromwell, had indeed been his comrade at bed and board from Marston
to Dunbar, and, though no Commons man, had more weight than any ten in
Parliament. Mr. Lovel could not but be conscious of the tension among
his acquaintances, and had he missed to note it there he would have
found it in the streets. Pride's troopers were everywhere, riding in
grim posses or off duty and sombrely puffing tobacco, vast, silent
men, lean from the wars. The citizens on the causeway hurried on their
errand, eager to find sanctuary from the biting air and the menace of
unknown perils. Never had London seen such a Christmastide. Every man
was moody and careworn, and the bell of Paul's as it tolled the hours
seemed a sullen prophet of woe.

His servant met him on the stair.

"He is here," he said. "I waited for him in the Bell Yard and brought
him in secretly."

Lovel nodded, and stripped off his cloak, giving it to the man. "Watch
the door like a dragon, Matthew," he told him. "For an hour we must be
alone. Forbid anyone, though it were Sir Harry himself."

The little chamber was bright with the glow of a coal fire. The red
curtains had been drawn and one lamp lit. The single occupant sprawled
in a winged leather chair, his stretched-out legs in the firelight, but
his head and shoulders in shadow. A man entering could not see the face,
and Lovel, whose eyes had been weakened by study, peered a second before
he closed the door behind him.

"I have come to you, Nick, as always when my mind is in tribulation."

The speaker had a harsh voice, like a bellman's which has been ruined
by shouting against crowds. He had got to his feet and seemed an elderly
man, heavy in body, with legs too short for the proportions of his
trunk. He wore a soldier's coat and belt, but no sword. His age might
have been fifty, but his face was so reddened by weather tha