days even in high life, and below it,
there was some reason for the employment of the padlock and the ducking
stool.

Floods of tears restored the dame to some sort of composure; but she
declared she could stay no longer in a house where her son had been ill-
used and deceived, and she had been insulted. The alderman thought the
insult had been the other way, but he was too glad to be rid of her on
any terms to gainsay her, and at his own charge, undertook to procure
horse and escort to convey her safely to Salisbury the next morning. He
advised Stephen to keep out of her sight for the rest of the day, giving
leave of absence, so that the youth, as one treading on air, set forth
to carry to his brother, his aunt, and if possible, his uncle, the
intelligence that he could as yet hardly believe was more than a happy
dream.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

UNWELCOME PREFERMENT.

"I am a poor fallen man, unworthy now
To be thy lord and master. Seek the king!
That sun I pray may never set."
Shakespeare.

Matters flowed on peaceably with Stephen and Dennet. The alderman saw
no reason to repent his decision, hastily as it had been made. Stephen
gave himself no unseemly airs of presumption, but worked on as one whose
heart was in the business, and Dennet rewarded her father's trust by her
discretion.

They were happily married in the summer of 1522, as soon as Stephen's
apprenticeship was over; and from that time, he was in the position of
the master's son, with more and more devolving on him as Tibble became
increasingly rheumatic every winter, and the alderman himself grew in
flesh and in distaste to exertion.

Ambrose meanwhile prospered with his master, and could easily have
obtained some office in the law courts that would have enabled him to
make a home of his own; but if he had the least inclination to the love
of women, it was all merged in a silent distant worship of "sweet pale
Margaret, rare pale Margaret," the like-minded daughter of Sir Thomas
More--an affection which was so entirely devotion at a shrine, that it
suffered no shock when Sir Thomas at length consented to his daughter's
marriage with William Roper.

Ambrose was the only person who ever received any communication from
Giles Headley. They were few and far between, but when Stephen Gardiner
returned from his embassy to Pope Clement the Seventh, who was then at
Orvieto, one of the suite reported to Ambrose how astonished he had been