all you need of me I'll
be gone," I says, "for I'm pressed."

'He turns him round and fumbles in a corner. "Too pressed to be made a
knight, Sir Harry?" he says, and comes at me smiling, with
three-quarters of a rusty sword.

'I pledge you my Mark I never guessed it was the King till that moment.
I kneeled, and he tapped me on the shoulder.

'"Rise up, Sir Harry Dawe," he says, and, in the same breath, "I'm
pressed, too," and slips through the tapestries, leaving me like a stuck
calf.

'It come over me, in a bitter wave like, that here was I, a master
craftsman, who had worked no bounds, soul or body, to make the King's
tomb and chapel a triumph and a glory for all time; and here, d'you see,
I was made knight, not for anything I'd slaved over, or given my heart
and guts to, but expressedly because I'd saved him thirty pounds and a
tongue-lashing from Catherine of Castile--she that had asked for the
ship. That thought shrivelled me withinsides while I was folding away my
draft. On the heels of it--maybe you'll see why--I began to grin to
myself. I thought of the earnest simplicity of the man--the King, I
should say--because I'd saved him the money; his smile as though he'd
won half France! I thought of my own silly pride and foolish
expectations that some day he'd honour me as a master craftsman. I
thought of the broken-tipped sword he'd found behind the hangings;
the dirt of the cold room, and his cold eye, wrapped up in his own
concerns, scarcely resting on me. Then I remembered the solemn chapel
roof and the bronzes about the stately tomb he'd lie in, and--d'ye
see?--the unreason of it all--the mad high humour of it all--took hold
on me till I sat me down on a dark stair-head in a passage, and laughed
till I could laugh no more. What else could I have done?

[Illustration: I kneeled, and he tapped me on the shoulder. 'Rise up,
Sir Harry Dawe,' he says.--P. 74.]

'I never heard his feet behind me--he always walked like a cat--but his
arm slid round my neck, pulling me back where I sat, till my head lay on
his chest, and his left hand held the knife plumb over my
heart--Benedetto! Even so I laughed--the fit was beyond my
holding--laughed while he ground his teeth in my ear. He was stark
crazed for the time.

'"Laugh," he said. "Finish the laughter. I'll not cut ye short. Tell me
now"--he wrenched at my head--"why the King chose to honour
you--you--you--you lickspittle Englishman? I am full of patience now. I
h