jerked with the spasms of his rage like those of a marionette.

'A shame that learned men should be so beaten!' Margot's gruff voice
uttered.

Katharine turned upon her.

'That is what made you speak e'ennow. You have been with this
flibbertigibbet.'

'This is a free land,' the girl mumbled, her mild eyes sparkling with
the contagious anger of her lover.

The old knight stood blinking upon Katharine.

'You are like to lose all your servants in this quarrel,' he said.

Katharine wrung her hands, and then turned her back upon them and
drummed upon the table with her fingers. Udal caught Margot's large
hand and fumbled it beneath the furs of his robe: the old knight kept
his smiling eyes upon Katharine's back. Her voice came at last:

'Why, I will not have Tom killed upon this occasion into which I
brought him.'

Rochford shrugged his shoulders up to his ears.

'Oh marvellous infatuation,' he said.

Katharine spoke, still with her back turned and her shoulders heaving:

'A marvellous infatuation!' she said, her voice coming softly and
deeply in her chest. 'Why, after his fashion this man loved me. God
help us, what other men have I seen here that would strike a straight
blow? Here it is moving in the dark, listening at pierced walls,
swearing of false treasons----'

She swept round upon the old man, her face moved, her eyes tender and
angry. She stretched out her hand, and her voice was pitiful and
urgent.

'Sir! Sir! What counsel do you give me, who are a knight of honour?
Would you let a man who lay in the cradle with you go to a shameful
death in an errand you had made for him?'

She leaned back upon the table with her eyes upon his face. 'No you
would not. How then could you give me such counsel?'

He said: 'Well, well. You are in the right.'

'Nearly I went with him to another place,' she answered, 'but half an
hour ago. Would to God I had! for here it is all treacheries.'

'Write your letter, child,' he answered. 'You shall give it to Cicely
Elliott to-morrow in the morning. I will have it conveyed, but I will
not be seen to handle it, for I am too young to be hanged.'

'Why, God help you, knight,' Udal whispered urgently from the doorway,
'carry no letter in this affair--if you escape, assuredly this mad
pupil of mine shall die. For the King----?' Suddenly he raised his
voice to a high nasal drawl that rang out like a jackdaw's: 'That is
very true; and, in this matter of Death you may read i