in
grey, stood awaiting Thomas Culpepper, Katharine Howard's cousin,
beneath the new gateway towards the east of Calais. Four days he had
waited already and never had he dared to stir, save when the gates
were closed for the night. But it had chanced that one of the
gatewardens was a man from Lincolnshire--a man, once a follower of the
plough, whose father had held a farm in the having of Culpepper
himself.

'----But he sold 'un,' Nicholas Hogben said, 'sold 'un clear away.' He
made a wry face, winked one eye, and drawing up the right corner of
his mouth, displayed square, huge teeth. The young Poins making no
question, he repeated twice: 'Clear away. Right clear away.'

Poins, however, could hold but one thing of a time in his head. And,
by that striving, dangerous servant of Lord Privy Seal, Throckmorton,
it had been firmly enjoined upon him that he must not fail to meet
Thomas Culpepper and stay him upon his road to England. Throckmorton,
with his great beard and cruel snake's eyes, had said: 'I hold thy
head in fee. If ye would save it, meet Thomas Culpepper in Calais and
give him this letter.' The letter he had in his poke. It carried with
it a deed making Culpepper lieutenant of the stone barges in Calais.
But he had it too, by word of mouth, that if Thomas Culpepper would
not be stayed by the letter, he, Hal Poins, must stay him--with the
sword, with a stab in the back, or by being stabbed himself and
calling in the guard to lay Thomas Culpepper's self by the heels.

'You will enjoin upon him,' Throckmorton had said, 'how goodly a thing
is the lieutenancy of stone lighters that in this letter is proffered
him. You will tell him that, if a barge of stone go astray, it is yet
a fair way to London, and stone fetches good money from townsmen
building in Calais. If he will gainsay this you will pick a quarrel
with him, as by saying he gives you the lie. In short,' Throckmorton
had finished, earnestly and with a sinuous grace of gesture in his
long and narrow hands, 'you will stay him.'

It was a desperate measure, yet it was the best he could compass. If
Culpepper came to London, if he came to the King, Katharine's fortunes
were not worth a rushlight such as were sold at twenty for a farthing.
He knew, too, that Viridus had Cromwell's earnest injunctions to send
a messenger that should hasten Culpepper's return; and, though he had
seven hundred of Cromwell's spies that he could trust to do Privy
Seal's errand, he