ind him. He drew a violent rein where the Cow Brook
crossed the deep muddied road and looked back.

'Sir,' he called, 'this night I will hold a mouse on a chain above a
coal fire. So I will see a burning, and my cousin Kat shall see it
with me.' He spurred on again.

By the time he was come to Brentford four men, habited like the first,
rode behind him. When he stayed to let his horse drink from the river
opposite Richmond Hill, he was aware that across the stream a pageant
with sweet music marched a little beyond the further bank. He could
see the tops of pikes and pennons amid the tree trunks.

He muttered that such a pageant he would very soon make for himself;
for, filled with the elation of his new magnificence, since Privy Seal
was his friend and Viridus was earnest to do him favour, he imagined
that no captain nor lord in that land soon should overpass him. For
that any lord should desire his new lands troubled him little; only he
hastened to cut that lord's throat and to kiss his cousin Kat.

It was a quarter before six when he drew rein in the green yard that
lay before the King's arch in Hampton. There befel the strangest
scuffle there; flaring for a moment and gone out like the gunpowder
they sometimes lit in saucers for sport. A man called Lascelles came
slowly from under the arch to meet him, and then, running over the
green grass from the little side door, came the young Poins in red
breeches, pulling off a red coat that he had had but half the time to
don and tugging at his sword whose hilt was caught in the sleeve hole.
Even as he issued, Lascelles, walking slowly, began to run and to
call. Four other men of Privy Seal's ran from under the arch, and the
four men that had followed behind him so far, closed their horses
round his. The boy had his sword out and his coat gave as he ran.
Lascelles closed near him on the grass, stretched out a foot to trip,
and the boy lay sprawling, his hands stretched out, his sword three
yards before him. The four men that had run from the arch had him up
upon his feet and held his arms when Culpepper had ridden the hundred
yards from the gate to them.

'Why,' said Culpepper, gazing upon the boy's face, 'it was thee
wouldst have my farms.' He spat in the boy's face and rode
complacently under the archway where were many men of Privy Seal's in
the side chambers and on the steps that ran steeply to the King's new
hall.

'I do conceive now,' Culpepper, in descending fro