ome good
blows.'

'Aye; you have struck blows against the Scots,' Katharine said. 'But
the beasts of the field strike as well against the foes of their
kind--the bull of the herd against lions; the Hyrcanian tiger against
the troglodytes; the basilisk against many beasts. It is the province
of a man to smite not only against the foes of his kind but--and how
much the more?--against the foes of his God.'

In the full flow of her speaking there came in the great, blonde
Margot Poins, her body-maid. She led by the hand the Magister Udal,
and behind them followed, with his foxy eyes and long, smooth beard,
the spy Throckmorton, vivid in his coat of green and scarlet
stockings. And, at the antipathy of his approach, Katharine's emotions
grew the more harrowing--as if she were determined to shew this evil
supporter of her cause how a pure fight should be waged. They moved
on tiptoe and stood against the hangings at the back.

She stretched out her hands to the old knight.

'Here you be in a pitiful and afflicted land from which the saints
have been driven out; have you struck one blow for the saints of God?
Nay, you have held your peace. Here you be where good men have been
sent to the block: have you decried their fates? You have seen noble
and beloved women, holy priests, blessed nuns defiled and martyred;
you have seen the poor despoiled; you have seen that knaves ruled by
aid of the devil about a goodly king. Have you struck one blow? Have
you whispered one word?'

The colour rushed into Margot Poins' huge cheeks. She kept her mouth
open to drink in her mistress's words, and Throckmorton waved his
hands in applause. Only Udal shuffled in his broken-toed shoes, and
old Rochford smiled benignly and tapped his chest above the chains.

'I have struck good blows in the quarrels that were mine,' he
answered.

Katharine wrung her hands.

'Sir, I have read it in books of chivalry, the province of a knight is
to succour the Church of God, to defend the body of God, to set his
lance in rest for the Mother of God; to defend noble men cast down,
and noble women; to aid holy priests and blessed nuns; to succour the
despoiled poor.'

'Nay, I have read no books of chivalry,' the old man answered; 'I
cannot read.'

'Ah, there be pitiful things in this world,' Katharine said, and her
chest was troubled.

'You should quote Hesiodus,' Cicely mocked her suddenly from her
stool. 'I marked this text when all my menfolk were sla