they ache and they ache.'

'I have sold farms to buy thee gowns,' he said desperately.

'I never asked it,' she answered coldly.

Henry was saying:

'Ah, Princes take as is brought them by others. Poor men be commonly
at their own choice.' His voice had a sort of patient regret. 'Why
brought ye not such a wench?'

Cromwell answered that in Lincoln, they said, she had been a coin that
would not bear ringing.

'You do not love her house,' the King said. 'Y' had better have
brought me such a one.'

Cromwell answered that his meaning was she had been won by others. The
King's Highness should have her for a wink.

Henry raised his shoulders with a haughty and angry shrug. Such a
quarry was below his stooping. He craved no light loves.

'I do not miscall the wench,' Cromwell answered. She was as her kind.
The King's Highness should find them all of a make in England.

'Y' are foul-mouthed,' Henry said negligently. ''Tis a well-spoken
wench. You shall find her a place in the Lady Mary's house.'

Cromwell smiled, and made a note upon a piece of paper that he pulled
from his pocket.

Culpepper, his arms jerking angularly, was creaking out:

'Come away, a' God's name. By all our pacts. By all our secret vows.'

'Ay thou didst vow and didst vow,' she said with a bitter weariness.
'What hast to shew? I have slept in filthy beds all this journey.
Speak the King well. He shall make thee at a word.'

He spat out at her.

'Is thine eye cocked up to that level?... I am very hot, very
choleric. Thou hast seen me. Thou shalt not live. I will slay thee. I
shall do such things as make the moon turn bloody red.'

'Aye art thou there?' she answered coldly. 'Ye have me no longer upon
lone heaths and moors. Mend thy tongue. Here I have good friends.'

Suddenly he began to entreat:

'Thy mule did stumble--an evil omen. Come away, come away. I know well
thou lovest me.'

'I know well I love thee too well,' she answered, as if in scorn of
herself.

'Come away to thy father.'

'Why what a bother is this,' she said. 'Thou wouldst to the wars to
get thee gold? Thou wouldst trail a pike? Thou canst do little without
the ear of some captain. Here is the great captain of them all.'

'I dare not speak here,' he muttered huskily. 'But this King....' He
paused and added swiftly: 'He is of an ill omen to all Katharines.'

'Why, he shall give me his old gloves to darn,' she laughed. 'Fond
knave, this King standeth on a mountai