avy
immobility of an elemental force. No fright could move her till she
saw the cause for fright. 'I will fetch thee a dram of strong waters.'

He passed his hand across his wet forehead.

'Thy mistress is taken,' he cried. 'I saw Privy Seal's pikes go to her
doorway.'

'Now God be praised,' the printer cried out, and caught at the boy's
wrist. 'Tell your tale!' and he shook him on his legs.

'Me, too, Privy Seal had taken--but I 'scaped free,' he gasped. 'These
twain had promised me advancement for braving their screeds. And I ha'
lost it.'

'Gossips all,' the Neighbour Ned barked out, 'to your feet and let us
sing: "A fortress fast is God the Lord." The harlot of the world is
down.'

II

During the time that had ensued between January and that month of
March, it had been proved to Katharine Howard how well Throckmorton,
the spy, voiced the men folk of their day. He had left her alone, but
she seemed to feel his presence in all the air. He passed her in
corridors, and she knew from his very silence that he was carrying on
a fumbling game with her uncle Norfolk, and with Gardiner of
Winchester. He had not induced her to play his game--but he seemed to
have made her see that every man else in the world was playing a game
like his. It was not, precisely, any more a world of black and white
that she saw, but a world of men who did one thing in order that
something very different might happen a long time afterwards.

The main Court had moved from Greenwich to Hampton towards the end of
January, but the Lady Mary, with her ladies, came to a manor house at
Isleworth; and shut in as she was with a grim mistress--who assuredly
was all white or black--Katharine found herself like one with ears
strained to catch sounds from a distance, listening for the smallest
rumours that could come from the other great house up stream.

The other ladies each had their men, as Cicely Elliott had the old
knight. One of them had even six, who one day fought a _melee_ for her
favours on an eyot before the manor windows. These men came by barge
in the evenings, or rode over the flats with a spare horse to take
their mistresses a-hawking after the herons in the swampy places. So
that each of them had her channel by which true gossip might reach
her. But Katharine had none. Till the opening of March the magister
came to whisper with Margot Poins--then he was sent again to Paris to
set his pen at the service of Sir Thomas Wyatt, who had