a ball of cobwebs from a
rafter.

'Clap that on,' was all he said, 'and put your handkerchief atop. 'Twill
cake over in a minute. It don't hurt now, do it?'

'No,' said Dan indignantly. 'You know it has happened lots of times.
I'll tie it up myself. Go on, sir.'

'And it'll happen hundreds of times more,' said Hal with a friendly nod
as he sat down again. But he did not go on till Dan's hand was tied up
properly. Then he said:

'One dark December day--too dark to judge colour--we was all sitting and
talking round the fires in the chapel (you heard good talk there), when
Bob Brygandyne bustles in and--"Hal, you're sent for," he squeals. I was
at Torrigiano's feet on a pile of put-locks, as I might be here,
toasting a herring on my knife's point. 'Twas the one English thing our
Master liked--salt herring.

'"I'm busy, about my art," I calls.

'"Art?" says Bob. "What's Art compared to your scroll-work for the
_Sovereign_. Come."

'"Be sure your sins will find you out," says Torrigiano. "Go with him
and see." As I followed Bob out I was aware of Benedetto, like a black
spot when the eyes are tired, sliddering up behind me.

'Bob hurries through the streets in the raw fog, slips into a doorway,
up stairs, along passages, and at last thrusts me into a little cold
room vilely hung with Flemish tapestries, and no furnishing except a
table and my draft of the _Sovereign's_ scroll-work. Here he leaves me.
Presently comes in a dark, long-nosed man in a fur cap.

'"Master Harry Dawe?" said he.

'"The same," I says. "Where a plague has Bob Brygandyne gone?"

'His thin eyebrows surged up a piece and come down again in a stiff bar.
"He went to the King," he says.

'"All one. What's your pleasure with me?" I says shivering, for it was
mortal cold.

'He lays his hand flat on my draft. "Master Dawe," he says, "do you know
the present price of gold leaf for all this wicked gilding of yours?"

'By that I guessed he was some cheese-paring clerk or other of the
King's Ships, so I gave him the price. I forget it now, but it worked
out to thirty pounds--carved, gilt, and fitted in place.

'"Thirty pounds!" he said, as though I had pulled a tooth of him. "You
talk as though thirty pounds was to be had for the asking. None the
less," he says, "your draft's a fine piece of work."

'I'd been looking at it ever since I came in, and 'twas viler even than
I judged it at first. My eye and hand had been purified the past months,
d'