n had in hand, as soon as the
indentures could be drawn out by one of the many scriveners who lived
about Saint Paul's.

This settled, Randall could stay no longer, but he called both nephews
into the court with him. "Ye can write a letter?" he said.

"Ay, sure, both of us; but Ambrose is the best scribe," said Stephen.

"One of you had best write then. Let that cur John know that I have my
Lord of York's ear, and there will be no fear but he will give it. I'll
find a safe hand among the clerks, when the judges ride to hold the
assize. Mayhap Ambrose might also write to the Father at Beaulieu. The
thing had best be bruited."

"I wished to do so," said Ambrose. "It irked me to have taken no leave
of the good Fathers."

Randall then took his leave, having little more than time to return to
York House, where the Archbishop might perchance come home wearied and
chafed from the King, and the jester might be missed if not there to put
him in good humour.

The curfew sounded, and though attention to its notes was not compulsory
by law, it was regarded as the break-up of the evening and the note of
recall in all well-ordered establishments. The apprentices and
journeymen came into the court, among them Giles Headley, who had been
taken out by one of the men to be provided with a working dress, much to
his disgust; the grandmother summoned little Dennet and carried her off
to bed. Stephen and Ambrose bade good-night, but Master Headley and his
two confidential men remained somewhat longer to wind up their accounts.
Doors were not, as a rule, locked within the court, for though it
contained from forty to fifty persons, they were all regarded as a
single family, and it was enough to fasten the heavily bolted, iron-
studded folding doors of the great gateway leading into Cheapside, the
key being brought to the master like that of a castle, seven minutes,
measured by the glass, after the last note of the curfew in the belfry
outside Saint Paul's.

The summer twilight, however, lasted long after this time of grace, and
when Tibble had completed his accountant's work, and Smallbones' deep
voiced "Good-night, comrade," had resounded over the court, he beheld a
figure rise up from the steps of the gallery, and Ambrose's voice said:
"May I speak to thee, Tibble? I need thy counsel."

"Come hither, sir," said the foreman, muttering to himself, "Methought
'twas working in him! The leaven! the leaven!"

Tibble led the w