as 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 scrollwork. 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 in a piece and come down again in a stiff
bar. "He went to the King," he says.

'"All one. Where'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'ye see, by my iron work.

'"I could do it better now," I said. The more I studied my squabby
Neptunes the less I liked 'em; and Arion was a pure flaming shame atop
of the unbalanced dolphins.

'"I doubt it will be fresh expense to draft it again," he says.

'"Bob never paid me for the first draft. I lay he'll never pay me for
the second. 'Twill cost the King nothing if I re-draw it," I says.

'"There's a woman wishes it to be done quickly," he says. "We'll stick
to your first draw