master of Latin, to write in English! I had
pardoned him my terror. I had pardoned him the heads of the good men
he hath struck off. For that princes should inspire terror is just,
and that the great ones of the earth should prey one upon the other is
a thing all history giveth precedent for since the days when Sylla
hunted to death Marius that sat amidst the ruins of Carthage. But that
the learned should be put to shame! that good letters should be cast
into the mire! History showeth no ensample of a man so vile since the
Emperor Alexander removed his shadow from before the tub of Diogenes.'

'In truth,' she said, blenching a little before his fury, 'I was ever
one that loved the rolling sound of your Greek and your Roman.'

'Give me my journey money,' he said, 'let me begone to England. For,
if indeed the Lady Katharine hath the King's ear, much may I aid her
with my counsels.'

She began to fumble in beneath her apron, and then, as if she
suddenly remembered herself, she placed her finger upon her lips.

'Husband,' she said, 'I have for you a gift. How it shall value itself
to you I little know, but I have before been much besought and offered
high payment for that which now I offer thee. Come.'

The finger still upon her plump lips, she led him to a small door
behind the chimney stack. They climbed up through cobwebs, ham,
flitches of smoked beef, and darkness, and the reek of wood-smoke,
until they came, high up, to a store-room in the slope of a mansard
roof. Light filtered dimly between the tiles, and many bales and sacks
lay upon the raftered floor like huge monsters in a huge, dim cave.

'Hearken! make no sound,' she whispered, and in the intense gloom they
heard a sullen, stertorous, intermittent rumble.

'The envoy sleeps,' she said. She set her eye to a knot-hole in the
planked wall. ''A sleeps!' she whispered. 'My pigling made a great
thirst in him. Much wine he drank. Set your eye to the knot-hole.'

With his face glued against the rough wood, the magister could see in
the large room a great fair man, in a great blue chair behind a
littered table. His head hung forward, shewed only a pink bald spot in
the thin hair, and brilliant red ears. A slow rumble of snoring came
for a long minute, then ceased for as long.

From behind Udal's back came a crash, and he started back to see the
large woman, who had overturned a chest.

'That is to test how he sleeps,' she said. 'See if he have moved.' The
man