, plain to see through the knot-hole, had stirred no muscle; again
the heavy rumble of the snore came to them. She spoke quite loudly
now. 'Why, naught shall wake him these five hours. 'A hath bolted the
door; thus his secretaries shall not come to him. See now.'

She slid back a board in the wall, and Udal could see into what
appeared to be a cupboard filled with a litter of papers and of
parchments. Udal's heart began to beat so that he noted it there; his
eyes searched hers with a glittering excitement--nevertheless a half
fear of awakening the envoy kept him from speaking.

'Take them! Take them!' she nudged him with her elbow. 'Six hours ye
have to read and to copy.'

'What papers are these?' he muttered, his voice thick betwixt
incredulous joy and fear.

'They be the envoy's papers,' she said; 'doubtless these be his
letters to the king of this land.... What there may be I know not
else.'

Udal's hands were in at the hole with the swift clutch of a miser
visiting his treasure-chest. The woman surveyed him with pleasure and
with pride in her achievement, and with the calmness of routine she
fitted a bar across the door of the cupboard where it opened into the
envoy's room. Udal was fumbling already with the strings of a packet,
his eyes searching the superscription in the gloom.

'Six hours ye have to read and to copy,' she said happily, 'for, for
six hours the poppy seed in his wine that he drank shall surely keep
him snoring.' And, whilst they went again down the stairway, the
papers secreted beneath the magister's gown, she explained with her
pride and happiness. The aumbry was so contrived that any envoy or
secretary sleeping in her best room must needs put his papers therein,
since there was in the room no other chest that locked. And the King
of France's chancellors allotted to all envoys her hostelry for a
lodging; and once there, she made them heavy with wine and poppy seed
after a receipt she had from an Egyptian, and at the appointed time
the King of France's men came to read through the papers and to pay
her much money and many kisses.

* * * * *

It was six hours later that the magister stood in his own room
crushing a fillet of papers into the breast of his brown jerkin. The
hostess, walking always calmly as if disorder of the mind were a thing
she were a stranger to, had reclimbed the narrow stairway, replaced
the papers in the envoy's cupboard and returned to