Kat Howard is
down under a man's foot.'

Culpepper rose suddenly to his feet and wagged a finger at Hogben.

'Now I am minded to wed Kat Howard!' he said. 'Therefore I will say I
lied then. But as for what you shall think, consider that I had her
alone many days and nights; consider that though she be over learned
in the Latin tongues that set a woman against joyment, I have a proper
person and a strong wrist, a pleasant tongue but a hot and virulent
purpose. Consider that she welly starved in her father, the Lord
Edmund's, house and I had pies and gowns for her. Consider these
things and make a hole or no hole as thou wilt----'

Nicholas Hogben considered with his eyes on the ground; he scratched
his head with a black finger.

'I can make nowt out,' he said. 'But I will curse thee for a
lily-livered hoggit an thou marry Kat Howard.'

'Why, I am minded to marry her,' Culpepper answered, 'over here in
France,' and he stretched a hand towards the long white road where in
the distance the French peasants were driving lean beasts for a true
Englishman's provender in Calais. 'Over here in France. Body of
God!--Body of God!----' He wavered, being still fevered. 'In England
it had been otherwise. But here, shivering across plains and
seas--why, I will wed with her.'

'Talkest like a Blind God Boy,' Hogben said sarcastically. 'How
knowest she be thine to take?' He pointed at the young Poins. 'Here be
another hath had doings with a Kat Howard, though I cannot well
discern if she be thine or whose.'

Culpepper sprang, a flash of green, straight at the callow boy. But
Poins had sprung too, back and to the left, and his oiled sword was
from its scabbard and warring in the air.

'Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee--Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee!'
he cried.

'Ass!' Culpepper answered. 'In God's time I will break thy back across
my knee. But God's time is not yet.'

He poured out a flood of questions about the Kat Howard Poins had
seen.

'Squahre Thomas,' Nicholas Hogben interrupted him maliciously, 'that
young man of Kent saith e'ennow: "Kat Howard is like to----" and then
he chokes upon his words. Now even what make of thing is it that Kat
Howard is like to do or be done by?'

With his sword whiffling before him the young Poins could think
rapidly--nay, upon any matter that concerned his advancement he could
think rapidly always.

'Goodman Thomas Culpepper,' he said in a high voice, 'the mistress
Katharine Howar