this. And instead of
advancement, he had received kicks, curses, cords on his wrists, an
interview with the Lord Privy Seal that still in the remembrance set
him shivering, and this chance, offered him by Throckmorton, that if
he stayed Thomas Culpepper he might save his neck.

'Why, then,' he grumbled to himself, 'is it treason to carry the
King's letters to a wench? Helping the King is no treason. I should be
advanced, not threatened with a halter. Letters between the King and
Kat Howard!' He even attempted to himself a clumsy joke, polishing it
and repolishing it till it came out: 'A King may write to a Kat. A Kat
may write to a King. But my neck's in danger!'

Beside him, whitened by the dust that fell from above, the gatewarden
wandered in speech round _his_ grievance.

'You ask me, young lad, if I know Tom Culpepper. Well I know Tom
Culpepper. Y' ask me if he have passed this way going for England.
Well I know he have not. For if Tom Culpepper, squire that was of
Durford and Maintree and Sallowford that was my father's farm--if so
be Tom Culpepper had passed this way, I had spat in the dust behind
him as he passed.'

He made his wry face, winked his eye and showed his teeth once more.
'Spat in the dust--I should ha' spat in the dust,' he remarked again.
'Or maybe I'd have cast my hat on high wi' "Huzzay, Squahre Tom!"
according as the mood I was in,' he said. He winked again and waited.

'For sure,' he affirmed after a pause, 'that will move 'ee to ask why
I du spit in the dust or for why--the thing being contrary--I'd ha'
cast up my cap.'

The young Poins pulled an onion from his poke.

'If you are so main sure he have not passed the gate,' he said, 'I may
take my ease.' He sat him down against the gate wall where the April
sun fell warm through the arch of shadows. He stripped the outer peel
from the onion and bit into it. 'Good, warming eating,' he said, 'when
your stomach's astir from the sea.'

'Young lad,' the gatewarden said, 'I'm as fain to swear my mother bore
me--though God forbid I should swear who my father was, woman being
woman--as that Thomas Culpepper have not passed this way. For why: I'd
have cast my hat on high or spat on the ground. And such things done
mark other things that have passed in the mind of a man. And I have
done no such thing.'

But because the young Poins sat always silent with his eyes on the
road to Ardres and slept--being privileged because he was yeoman of
the King