iews
which were sufficiently numerous for one engaged in so many affairs.
Cromwell had learnt by now that he could be trusted to say little and to
learn much, and the early acts of many little dramas that had ended in
tragedy had been performed in the two gravely-furnished rooms on the
ground floor. A good deal of the law-business, in its early stages,
connected with the annulling of the King's marriage with Queen Katharine
had been done there; a great canonist from a foreign university had
explained there his views in broken English, helped out with Latin, to a
couple of shrewd-faced men, while Ralph watched the case for his master;
and Cromwell himself had found the little retired house a convenience
for meeting with persons whom he did not wish to frighten over much,
while Ralph and Mr. Morris sat alert and expectant on the other side of
the hall, with the door open, listening for raised voices or other signs
of a quarrel.

The rooms upstairs had been furnished with considerable care. The floors
of both were matted, for the plan involved less trouble than the
continual laying of clean rushes. The sitting-room was panelled up six
feet from the floor, and the three feet of wall above were covered with
really beautiful tapestry that Ralph had brought up from Overfield.
There was a great table in the centre, along one side of which rested a
set of drawers with brass handles, and in the centre of the table was a
deep well, covered by a flap that lay level with the rest of the top.
Another table stood against the wall, on which his meals were served,
and the door of a cupboard in which his plate and knives were kept
opened immediately above it, designed in the thickness of the wall.
There were half-a-dozen chairs, two or three other pieces of furniture,
a backed settle by the fire and a row of bookshelves opposite the
windows; and over the mantelpiece, against the tapestry, hung a picture
of Cromwell, painted by Holbein, and rejected by him before it was
finished. Ralph had begged it from the artist who was on the point of
destroying it. It represented the sitter's head and shoulders in
three-quarter face, showing his short hair, his shrewd heavy face, with
its double chin, and the furred gown below.

Mr. Morris was ready for his master and opened the door to him.

"There are some letters come, Mr. Ralph, sir," he said. "I have laid
them on your table."

Ralph nodded, slipped off his thin cloak into his servant's hands