e day that
saw your birth?' She had sobs in her voice and she wrung her hands.
'Sir,' she cried, 'I say you are as a dead man already--your day of
pride is past, whether ye aid us or no. Set yourself then to redress
as heartily as ye have set yourself in the past to make sad. That land
is blest whose people are happy; that State is aggrandised whence
there arise songs praising God for His blessings. You have built up a
great city of groans; set yourself now to build a kingdom where
"Praise God" shall be sung. It is a contented people that makes a
State great; it is the love of God that maketh a people rich.'

Cromwell laughed mirthlessly:

'There are forty thousand men like Wriothesley in England,' he said.
'God help you if you come against them; there are forty times forty
thousand and forty times that that pray you not again to set disorder
loose in this land. I have broken all stiff necks in this realm. See
you that you come not against some yet.' He stopped, and added: 'Your
greatest foes should be your own friends if I be a dead man as you
say.' And he smiled at her bewilderment when he had added: 'I am your
bulwark and your safeguard.'

... 'For, listen to me,' he took up again his parable. 'Whilst I be
here I bear the rancour of your friends' hatred. When I am gone you
shall inherit it.'

'Sir,' she said, 'I am not here to hear riddles, but here I am to pray
you seek the right.'

'Wench,' he said pleasantly, 'there are in this world many rights--you
have yours; I mine. But mine can never be yours nor yours mine. I am
not yet so dead as ye say; but if I be dead, I wish you so well that I
will send you a phial of poison ere I send to take you to the stake.
For it is certain that if you have not my head I shall have yours.'

She looked at him seriously, though the tears ran down her cheeks.

'Sir,' she uttered, 'I do take you to be a man of your word. Swear to
me, then, that if upon the fatal hill I do save you your life and your
estates, you will nowise work the undoing of the Church in time to
come.'

'Madam Queen that shall be,' he said, 'an ye gave me my life this day,
to-morrow I would work as I worked yesterday. If ye have faith of your
cause I have the like of mine.'

She hung her head, and said at last:

'Sir, an ye have a little door here at the gallery end I will go out
by it'; for she would not again face the men who made the little knot
before the window. He moved the hangings aside and stoo