stership shall have her,' the boy said. 'I am her
lawful guardian.'

His grandfather laughed as men laugh to see a colt kick up its heels
in a meadow.

But the printer waved his bare arm furiously at the magister.

'Get thee gone out of this decent house.' His eyes rolled, and his
clenched fist was as large as a ham. 'Here you come not a-wenching.'

'Moody man,' the magister said, 'your brains are addled with
suspicions.'

The young man swelled his scarlet breast still more consequentially.
'This is no house of thine, uncle, but my grandfar's.'

'Young ass's colt!' the printer fulminated. 'Would'st have thy sister
undone by this Latin mouth-mincer?'

Udal grinned at him, and licked his lips. The printer snarled:

'Know'st thou not, young ass, that this man was thrown out of his
mastership at Eton for his foul living?'

Udal was suddenly on his feet with the long pasty-knife held back
among the furs of his gown.

'Ignoble ...' he began, but he lost his words in his trembling rage.
The printer snatched at his long measuring stick.

'Down knife,' he grunted, for his fury, too, made his throat catch.

'Have a care, nunkey,' the young man laughed at the pair of them.
'They teach knife-thrusts in his Italian books.'

'I will have thy printer's licence revoked, ignoble man,' the magister
said, grinning hideously. 'Thou, a Lutheran, to turn upon me who was
undone by Papist lies! They said I lived foully; they said I stole the
silver cellars....'

He turned upon the old man, stretching out the hand that held the
knife in a passionate gesture:

'Your Papists said that,' he appealed. 'But not a one of them believed
it, though you dub me Lutheran.... See you, do I not govern now the
chief Papist of you all? Would that be if they believed me filthy in
my living. Have I not governed in the house of the Howards, the lord
of it being absent? Would that have been if they had believed it of
me?... And then....' He turned again upon the printer. 'For the sake
of your men ... for the sake of the New Learning, which God prosper, I
was cast down.'

The printer grunted surlily:

''Tis known no wench is safe from thy amorousness. How many husbands
have broken thy pate?'

The magister threw the knife on to the table and rose, frostily
rustling in his gown.

'I shall bring thee down, ignoble man,' he said.

'If thou hast the power to do that,' the old man asked suddenly,
'wherefore canst not get me redress in the matte