without speaking, laid down his cane and went upstairs.

The letters were very much what he expected, and dealt with cases on
which he was engaged. There was an entreaty from a country squire near
Epping Forest, whose hounds had got into trouble with the King's
foresters that he would intercede for him to Cromwell. A begging letter
from a monk who had been ejected from his monastery for repeated
misconduct, and who represented himself as starving; Ralph lifted this
to his nostrils and it smelt powerfully of spirits, and he laid it down
again, smiling to himself. A torrent of explanation from a schoolmaster
who had been reported for speaking against the sacrament of the altar,
calling the saints to witness that he was no follower of Fryth in such
detestable heresy. A dignified protest from a Justice of the Peace in
Kent who had been reproved by Cromwell, through Ralph's agency, for
acquitting a sturdy beggar, and who begged that he might in future deal
with a responsible person; and this Ralph laid aside, smiling again and
promising himself that he would have the pleasure of granting the
request. An offer, written in a clerkly hand, from a fellow who could
not sign his name but had appended a cross, to submit some important
evidence of a treasonable plot, on the consideration of secrecy and a
suitable reward.

A year ago such a budget would have given Ralph considerable pleasure,
and a sense of his own importance; but business had been growing on him
rapidly of late, as his master perceived his competence, and it gave him
no thrill to docket this one, write a refusal to that, a guarded answer
to another, and finally to open the well of his table and drop the
bundle in.

Then he turned round his chair, blew out one candle carefully, and set
to thinking about Master Thomas More.

CHAPTER V

MASTER MORE

It was not until nearly a month later that Ralph made an opportunity to
call upon Sir Thomas More. Cromwell had given him to understand that
there was no immediate reason for haste; his own time was tolerably
occupied, and he thought it as well not to make a show of over-great
hurry. He wrote to Sir Thomas, explaining that he wished to see him on a
matter connected with his brother Christopher, and received a courteous
reply begging him to come to dinner on the following Thursday, the
octave of the Assumption, as Sir Thomas thought it proper to add.

* * * * *

It was a won