ren of my sister were ever
indifferents. They shall not serve thee well.'

'It was ever Privy Seal's motto and habit to use for his servitors
those that had their necks in his noose. Such men serve him ever the
best.'

The printer shook his head gloomily.

'I wager my nephew will yet play the traitor to Privy Seal.'

'I will do it myself ere that,' and Throckmorton yawned, throwing his
head back.

'The scaldhead is there,' the printer said; and in the doorway there
stood, supporting himself by the lintel, the young Poins. His face was
greenish white; a plaster was upon his shaven head; he held up one
foot as if it pained him to set it to the floor. Through the
house-place where sat the aged grandfather with his cap pulled over
his brows, pallid, ironical and seeming indescribably ancient, the
printer led the spy. The boy hobbled after them, neglecting the old
man's words:

'Ha' no truck with men of Privy Seal's. Privy Seal hath stolen my
ground.' In the long shed where they ate all, printer, grandfather,
apprentices and journeymen, the printer thrust open the door with a
heavy gesture, entering first and surveying the long trestles.

'Ye can speak here,' he said, and motioned away an aged woman. She
bent above a sea coal fire on the hearth where boiled, hung from a
hook, a great pot. The old thing, in short petticoats and a linsey
woolsey bodice that had been purple and green, protested shrilly. Her
crock was on the boil; she was not there to be driven away; she had
work like other folk, and had been with the printer's mother eight
years before he was born. His voice, raised to its height, was useless
to drown her words. She could not hear him; and shrugging his
shoulders, he said to Throckmorton that she heard less than the walls,
and that was the best place he had for them to talk in. He slammed the
door behind him.

Throckmorton set his foot upon the bench that ran between table and
wall. He scowled fell-ly at the boy, so that his brows came down below
his nose-top. 'Ye ha' not stayed him,' he said.

The boy burst forth in a torrent of rage and despair. He cursed
Throckmorton to his face for having sent him upon this errand.

'I ha' been beaten by a gatewarden! by a knave! by a ploughman's son
from Lincolnshire!' he cried. 'A' cracked my skull with a pikestave
and kicked me about the ribs when I lay on the ship's floor, sick like
a pig. God curse the day you sent me to Calais, a gentleman's son, to
be b