dy Mary sent her letters abroad had
never been found; that Cromwell had appointed three tutors in
succession to be aid to the Lady Mary in her studies. Each of these
three she had broken and cast out from her doors, she being by far the
more learned, so that, though Privy Seal in his might had seven
thousand spies throughout the realm of England, he had among them no
man learned enough to take this place and to spy out the things that
he would learn.

'Therefore Privy Seal did send for thee, who art accounted the most
learned doctor in Christendom.' His wife's eyes glowed and her face
became ruddy with pride in her husband's fame.

The magister waved his hand pleasantly.

'Therefore he did send for me.' Privy Seal had promised him seven
hundred pounds, farms with sixty pounds by the year, or the headship
of New College if the magister could discover how the Lady Mary wrote
her letters abroad.

'So I have stayed three years with the Lady Mary,' Udal said. 'But
before God,' he asseverated, 'though I have known these twenty-nine
months that she sent away her letters in the crusts of pudding pies,
never hath cur Crummock had word of it.'

'A fool he, to set thee to spy upon a petticoat,' she answered
pleasantly.

'Woman,' he answered hotly, 'crowns I have made by making reports to
Privy Seal. I have set his men to watch doors and windows where none
came in or entered; I have reported treasons of men whose heads had
already fallen by the axe; I have told him of words uttered by maids
of honour whom he knew full well already miscalled him. Sometimes I
have had a crown or two from him, sometimes more; but no good man hath
been hurt by my spying.'

'Husband,' she uttered, with her face set expressionlessly, 'knew ye
that the Frenchman's cook that made the pudding pies had been taken
and cast into the Tower gaol?'

Udal's arms flew above his head; his eyes started from their sockets;
his tongue came forth from his pale mouth to lick his dry lips, and
his legs failed him so that he sat himself down, wavering from side to
side in the window-seat.

'Then the commentary of Plautus shall never be written,' he wailed. He
wrung his hands. 'Whom have they taken else?' he said. 'How knew ye
these things when I nothing knew? What make of house is this where
such things be known?'

'Husband,' she answered, 'this house is even an inn. Where many
travellers pass through, many secrets are known. I know of this cook's
fate since