father-in-law cackling to the serving-maids through the cracks of the
floor.

When she came down there were approaching, across the field before the
door, six men in scarlet and one in black, having all the six halberds
and swords, and one a little banner, but the man in black had a sword
only. Their horses were tethered in a clump on the farther side of the
dyke. Within the room the serving-maids were throwing knives and pewter
dishes with a great din on to the table slab. They dropped
drinking-horns and the salt-cellar itself all of a heap into the rushes.
The grandfather was cackling from his chair; a hen and its chickens ran
screaming between the maids' feet. Then Lascelles came in at the
doorway.

III

The Sieur Lascelles looked round him in that dim cave.

'Ho!' he said, 'this place stinks,' and he pulled from his pocket a
dried and shrivelled orange-peel purse stuffed with cloves and ginger.
'Ho!' he said to the cornet that was come behind him with the Queen's
horsemen. 'Come not in here. This will breed a plague amongst your men!'
and he added--

'Did I not tell you my sister was ill-housed?'

'Well, I was not prepared against this,' the cornet said. He was a man
with a grizzling beard that had little patience away from the Court,
where he had a bottle that he loved and a crony or two that he played
all day at chequers with, except when the Queen rode out; then he was of
her train. He did not come over the sill, but spoke sharply to his men.

'Ungird not here,' he said. 'We will go farther.' For some of them were
for setting their pikes against the mud wall and casting their swords
and heavy bottle-belts on to the table before the door. The old man in
the armchair began suddenly to prattle to them all--of a horse-thief
that had been dismembered and then hanged in pieces thirty years
before. The cornet looked at him for a moment and said--

'Sir, you are this woman's father-in-law, I do think. Have you aught to
report against her?' He bent in at the door, holding his nose. The old
man babbled of one Pease-Cod Noll that had no history to speak of but a
swivel eye.

'Well,' the grizzled cornet said, 'I shall get little sense here.' He
turned upon Mary Hall.

'Mistress,' he said, 'I have a letter here from the Queen's High Grace,'
and, whilst he fumbled in his belt to find a little wallet that held the
letter, he spoke on: 'But I misdoubt you cannot read. Therefore I shall
tell you the Queen's High