d imprecation, seemed to be giving
the signal for new uproars.

Whilst he shouted with delight, Culpepper felt a man catch at his leg.
He kicked his foot loose, but his hand on the bridle was clutched.
There was a fair man at his horse's shoulder that bore Privy Seal's
lion badge upon his chest. His face was upturned, and in the clamour
he spoke indistinguishable words. Culpepper struck towards the mouth
with his fist; the man shrank back, but stood, nevertheless, close
still in the crowd. When the silence fell again, Culpepper could hear
amongst the swift chopping of the axes the words--

'I rede ye ride swiftly to Hampton. I am the Lord Cromwell's man.'

Culpepper brought his excited mind from the thought of the burning and
the joy of the day, with its crowd and its odour of men, and sunshine
and tumult.

'Ye say? Swine,' he shouted. 'Come aside!' He caught at the man's
collar and kicked his horse and pulled at its jaws till it drew them
out of the thin crowd to a street's opening.

'Sir,' the man said--he had a goodly cloth suit of dark green that
spoke to his being of weight in some house-hold--'ye are like to lose
your farms at Bromley an ye hasten not to Master Viridus, who holdeth
the deedings to you.'

Culpepper uttered an inarticulate roar and smote his patient horse on
the side of the head for two minutes of fierce blows, digging with his
heels into the girthings.

'Sir,' the man said again, 'some lord will have these lands an ye come
not to Hampton ere six of the clock. I know not the way of it that be
a servant. But Master Viridus sent me with this message.'

Already a thin swirl of blue smoke was ascending past the friar's
figure to the bright sky; it caressed the beam of the gallows and
Culpepper's bloodshot eye pursued it upwards.

'Before God!' he muttered, 'I was set to see this burning. Ye have
seen many; I never a one.' A new spasm of rage caught him: he dragged
at his horse's head, and shouting, 'Gallop! gallop!' set off into the
dark streets, his crony behind his back.

In the Poultry he knocked over a man in a red coat that had a gold
chain about his neck; on the Chepe he jumped his horse across a
pigman's booth--it brought down Hogben, horse and pike; three drunken
men were fighting in Paternoster Street--Culpepper charged above their
bodies; but very shortly he came through Temple Bar and was in the
marshes and fields. Well out between the hedgerows he was aware that
one galloped beh