g to love the classics and devotion," he went on
presently with a sententious air, "they are solaces in time of trouble.
I have found that myself."

He glanced up at the other and down again.

"I was caught saying our Lady matins one day," he said, "when the
Cardinal was in trouble. I remember I was very devout that morning."

He went on to talk of Wolsey and of his relations with him, and Ralph
watched that heavy smooth face become reminiscent and almost
sentimental.

"If he had but been wiser;" he said. "I have noticed again and again the
folly of wise men. There is always clay mixed with gold. I suppose
nothing but the fire that Fryth denied can purge it out; and my lord's
was ambition."

He wagged his head in solemn reprobation, and Ralph did not know whether
to laugh or to look grave. Then there fell a long silence, and Cromwell
again fell to fingering his signet-ring, taking it off his thumb and
rolling it on the smooth oak, and at last stood up with a brisker air.

"Welt," he said, "I have a thousand affairs, and my son Gregory is
coming here soon. Then you will see about that matter. Remember I wish
to know what Master More thinks of her, that--that I may know what to
think."

* * * * *

Ralph understood sufficiently clearly, as he walked home in the evening
light, what it was that his master wanted. It was no less than to catch
some handle against the ex-chancellor, though he had carefully abstained
from saying so. Ralph recognised the adroitness, and saw that while the
directions had been plain and easy to understand, yet that not one word
had been spoken that could by any means be used as a handle against
Cromwell. If anyone in England at that time knew how to wield speech it
was his master; it was by that weapon that he had prevailed with the
King, and still kept him in check; it was that weapon rashly used by his
enemies that he was continually turning against them, and under his
tutoring Ralph himself had begun to be practised in the same art.

Among other causes, too, of his admiration for Cromwell, was the
latter's extraordinary business capacity. There was hardly an affair of
any importance in which he did not have a finger at least, and most of
them he held in the palm of his hand, and that, not only in the mass but
in their minutest details. Ralph had marvelled more than once at the
minutiae that he had seen dotted down on the backs of old letters lying
on his