the sun shines again."

"You are a brave soul!" swirl John Heywood, sadly.

"That is, I am conscious of no guilt!"

"But your enemies will invent a crime to charge you with. Ah, as soon as
it is the aim to calumniate a neighbor and plunge him in misery, men are
all poets!"

"But you just now said that poets are crack-brained, and should be hung
to the first tree. We will, therefore, treat these slanderers as poets,
that is all."

"No, that is not all!" said John Heywood, energetically. "For slanderers
are like earth-worms. You cut them in pieces, but instead of thereby
killing them, you multiply each one and give it several heads."

"But what is it, then, that I am accused of?" exclaimed Catharine,
impatiently. "Does not my life lie open and clear before you all? Do I
ever take pains to have any secrets? Is not my heart like a glass house,
into which you can all look, to convince yourselves that it is a soil
wholly unfruitful, and that not a single poor little flower grows
there?"

"Though this be so, your enemies will sow weeds and make the king
believe that it is burning love which has grown up in your heart."

"How! They will accuse me of having a love-affair?" asked Catharine, and
her lips slightly trembled.

"I do not know their plans yet; but I will find them out. There is a
conspiracy at work. Therefore, queen, be on your guard! Trust nobody,
for foes are ever wont to conceal themselves under hypocritical faces
and deceiving words."

"If you know my enemies, name them to me!" said Catharine, impatiently.
"Name them to me, that I may beware of them."

"I have not come to accuse anybody, but to warn you. I shall, therefore,
take good care not to point out your enemies to you; but I will name
your friends to you."

"Ah, then, I have friends, too!" whispered Catharine, with a happy
smile.

"Yes, you have friends; and, indeed, such as are ready to give their
blood and life for you."

"Oh, name them, name them to me!" exclaimed Catharine, all of a tremble
with joyful expectation.

"I name first, Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury. He is your true and
staunch friend, on whom you can build. He loves you as queen, and
he prizes you as the associate whom God has sent him to bring to
completion, here at the court of this most Christian and bloody king,
the holy work of the Reformation, and to cause the light of knowledge
to illuminate this night of superstition and priestly domination.
Build strongly on