.

He had received that day at Hampton a letter from the printer here in
Austin Friars, sent hastening by the hands of the pressman whose idle
machine he now leant against. 'Sir,' the letter said, 'my nephew saith
urgently that T.C. is landed at Greenwich. He might not stay him. What
this importeth best is yknown to your worshipful self. By the swaying
of the sea which late he overpassed, being tempestive, and by other
things, my nephew is rendered incoherent. That God may save you and
guide your counsels and those of your master to the more advantaging
of the Protestant religion that now, praised be God! standeth higher
in the realm than ever it did, is the prayer of Jno. Badge the
Younger.'

Throckmorton had hastened there to the hedges of Austin Friars at the
fastest of his bargemen's oars. The printer had told him that, but
that the business was the Lord Privy Seal's and, as he understood,
went to the advantaging of Protestantism and the casting down of
Popery, never would he ha' sent with the letter his own printer
journeyman, busied as they were with printing of his great Bible in
English.

'Here is an idle press,' he said, pointing at the mute and lugubrious
instrument of black, 'and I doubt I ha' done wrong.' His moody brow
beneath the black, dishevelled hair became overcast so that it
wrinkled into great furrows like crowns. 'I doubt whether I have done
wrong,' and he folded his immense bare arms, on which the hair was
like a black boar's, and pondered. 'If I thought I had done wrong, I
might not sleep seven nights.'

A printer yawned at his loom, and the great dark man shouted at him:

'Foul knave, ye show indolence! Wot ye that ye be printing the Word of
God to send abroad in this land? Wot ye that for this ye shall stand
with the elect in Heaven?' He turned upon Throckmorton. 'Sir,' he
said, 'your master Cromwell advanceth the cause, therefore I ha'
served him in this matter of the letter. But, sir, I am doubtful that,
by losing one moment from the printing of the pure Word of God, I have
not lost more time than a year's work of thy master.'

Throckmorton rubbed gently the long hand that he still held against
the light.

'Ye fall away from Privy Seal?' he asked.

The printer gazed at him with glowering and suffused eyes, choking in
his throat. He raised an enormous hand before Throckmorton's face.

'Courtier,' he cried, 'with this hand I ha' stopped an ox, smiting it
between the eyes. Wo befal th