ne not. Give me leave, I pray you, to
aid your graceful steps down this rough hill-side."

So down the hill with me came Sir _Edwin_, and mighty pleasant discourse
had we--all the fairer for coming after _Jack_. And much he told me of
his estate in _Cornwall_, where he hath a fair castle, built of old
time, and mines like to ours, saving they be tin, not lead. And these
_Cornish_ mines, as he told me, were worked of old time by the _Jews_:
but when I did demand of him how _Jews_ should come to work them, that
(quoth he) could he not say. And at times, in these mines, deep down in
the old workings, do they hear the ghosts of them that worked them a
thousand years ago, a-knocking with the pickaxe; and when they do break
into the ancient workings, they come on the olden pickaxes of stags'
horn, used of these old _Jews_ and _Romans_, that did labour in these
mines of old time.

"Good lack!" cried I: "and be these the very pickaxes used of these
ghosts? Verily, I would be feared for to touch them."

"Nay, the tools themselves be no ghosts," saith he, laughing: "and I do
ensure you, fair my mistress, I have seen and handled divers thereof."

Then he told me, moreover, of a new custom is risen up in the Queen's
Majesty's Court: for right courtly discourse he hath, and the names of
dukes and earls do fly about in his talk as though he were hand and
glove with every man of them. I do love to hear such discourse, and
that right dearly. Many a time have I essayed for to win _Mother_ to
enter into talk touching those days when she dwelt in _Surrey_ Place
with my good Lady Countess of _Surrey_: but I wis not well wherefore,
she ever seemeth to have no list to talk of that time. She will tell us
of her 'prisonment in the _Counter_, and how _Father_ brought the little
shell for to comfort her, and at after how he fetched her out, and rode
away with her and had a care of her, when as she was let forth: but even
in that there seems me like as there should be a gap, which she never
filleth up. I marvel if there were somewhat of that time the which she
would not we should know. [Note 5.] I did once whisper a word of this
make unto _Nell_: but Mistress _Helena_, that doth alway the right and
meet thing, did seem so mighty shocked that I should desire to ferret
forth somewhat that _Mother_ had no list for me to know, that I let her
a-be. But for all that would I dearly love to know it. I do take
delight in digging up of othe