nst the mouth of a furnace, and lay ten months in
Saint Bartholomew's Spital, scarce moving hand or foot. He cannot wield
a hammer, but he has a cunning hand for gilding, and coloured devices,
and is as good as Garter-king-at-arms himself for all bearings of
knights and nobles."

"As we heard last night," said Stephen.

"Moreover in the spital he learnt to write and cast accompts like a very
scrivener, and the master trusts him more than any, except maybe Kit
Smallbones, the head smith."

"What will Smallbones think of the new prentice!" said one of the other
men.

"Prentice! 'Tis plain enough what sort of prentice the youth is like to
be who beareth the name of a master with one only daughter."

An emphatic grunt was the only answer, while Ambrose pondered on the
good luck of some people, who had their futures cut out for them with no
trouble on their own part.

This day's ride was through more inhabited parts, and was esteemed less
perilous. They came in sight of the Thames at Lambeth, but Master
Headley, remembering how ill his beloved Poppet had brooked the ferry,
decided to keep to the south of the river by a causeway across Lambeth
marsh, which was just passable in high and dry summers, and which
conducted them to a raised road called Bankside, where they looked
across to the towers of Westminster, and the Abbey in its beauty dawned
on the imagination of Stephen and Ambrose. The royal standard floated
over the palace, whence Master Headley perceived that the King was
there, and augured that my Lord of York's meine would not be far to
seek. Then came broad green fields with young corn growing, or hay
waving for the scythe, the tents and booths of May Fair, and the
beautiful Market Cross in the midst of the village of Charing, while the
Strand, immediately opposite, began to be fringed with great monasteries
within their ample gardens, with here and there a nobleman's castellated
house and terraced garden, with broad stone stairs leading to the
Thames.

Barges and wherries plied up and down, the former often gaily canopied
and propelled by livened oarsmen, all plying their arms in unison, so
that the vessel looked like some brilliant many-limbed creature treading
the water. Presently appeared the heavy walls inclosing the City
itself, dominated by the tall openwork timber spire of Saint Paul's,
with the four-square, four-turreted Tower acting, as it has been well
said, as a padlock to a chain, and the