ains glanced at each other.

"Ah! does that touch you?" asked Sir John Foterell. "Well, then, here is
what shall make you smart. You think yourself in favour at the Court, do
you not? because you took the oath of succession which braver men, like
the brethren of the Charterhouse, refused, and died for it. But you
forget the words you said to me when the wine you love had a hold of you
in my hall----"

"Silence! For your own sake, silence, Sir John Foterell!" broke in the
Abbot. "You go too far."

"Not so far as you shall go, my Lord Abbot, ere I have done with you.
Not so far as Tower Hill or Tyburn, thither to be hung and quartered as
a traitor to his Grace. I tell you, you forget the words you spoke, but
I will remind you of them. Did you not say to me when the guests had
gone, that King Henry was a heretic, a tyrant, and an infidel whom the
Pope would do well to excommunicate and depose? Did you not, when I led
you on, ask me if I could not bring about a rising of the common people
in these parts, among whom I have great power, and of those gentry who
know and love me, to overthrow him, and in his place set up a certain
Cardinal Pole, and for the deed promise me the pardon and absolution
of the Pope, and much advancement in his name and that of the Spanish
Emperor?"

"Never," answered the Abbot.

"And did I not," went on Sir John, taking no note of his denial, "did
I not refuse to listen to you and tell you that your words were
traitorous, and that had they been spoken otherwhere than in my house,
I, as in duty bound by my office, would make report of them? Aye, and
have you not from that hour striven to undo me, whom you fear?"

"I deny it all," said the Abbot again. "These be but empty lies bred of
your malice, Sir John Foterell."

"Empty words, are they, my Lord Abbot! Well, I tell you that they are
all written down and signed in due form. I tell you I had witnesses you
knew naught of who heard them with their ears. Here stands one of them
behind my chair. Is it not so, Jeffrey?"

"Aye, master," answered the serving-man. "I chanced to be in the little
chamber beyond the wainscot with others waiting to escort the Abbot
home, and heard them all, and afterward I and they put our marks upon
the writing. As I am a Christian man that is so, though, master, this is
not the place that I should have chosen to speak of it, however much I
might be wronged."

"It will serve my turn," said the enraged knight, "thoug