the apparitors, the collectors of taxes, or the
Parliament men?'

'These, too, perform indifferent well their appointed tasks,' the
printer said gloomily.

'Or is it with the Church of this realm that ye find fault?'

'Body of God!' the stranger said heavily.

'Nay!' the printer answered, 'for the supreme head of that Church is the
King, a man learned before all others in the law of God; such a King as
speaketh as though he were that mouthpiece of the Most High that the
Antichrist at Rome claimeth to be.'

'Is it, then, with the worshipful the little Prince of Wales that ye are
discontented?' Lascelles read, and the printer answered that there was
not such another Prince of his years for promise and for performance,
too, in all Christendom.

The stranger said from the hearth-place--

'Well! we are commended,' and his voice was bitter and ironical.

'How is it, then,' Lascelles read on, 'that ye say all is not over well
in the land?'

The printer's gloomy and black features glared with a sudden rage.

'How should all be well with a land,' he cried, 'where in high places
reigns harlotry?' He raised his clenched fist on high and glared round
upon his audience. 'Corruption that reacheth round and about and down
till it hath found a seedbed even in this poor house of my father's? Or
if it is well with this land now, how shall it continue well when
witchcraft rules near the King himself, and the Devil of Rome hath there
his emissaries.'

A chitter of sound came from his audience, so that it appeared that they
were all of a strain. They moved in their seats; the shipman cried out--

'Ay! witchcraft! witchcraft!'

The huge bulk of the stranger, black and like a bull's, half rose from
its chair.

'Body of God!' he cried out. 'This I will not bear.'

Again the older man leaned solicitously above him and whispered,
pleading with his hands, and Lascelles said hastily--

'Speak of your own knowledge. How should you know of what passes in high
places?'

'Why!' the printer cried out, 'is it not the common report? Do not all
men know it? Do not the butchers sing of it in the shambles, and the
bot-flies buzz of it one to the other? I tell you it is spread from here
into Almain, where the very horse-sellers are a-buzz with it.'

In his chair the stranger cried out--

'Ah! ah!' as if he were in great pain. He struggled with his feet and
then sat still.

'I have heard witnesses that will testify to these things,'