all ye him?--as readily as I could show you my
brother, Thomas Shoveller of Cranbury. But you are just as like to meet
with some knave who might cozen you of all you have, or mayhap a beadle
might take you up for vagabonds, and thrust you in the stocks, or ever
you get to London town; so I would fain give you some commendation, an I
knew to whom to make it, and ye be not too proud to take it."

"You are but too good to us, sir," said Ambrose, quite conquered, though
Stephen only half believed in the difficulties. The Father took them
within the west door of the Minster, and looking up and down the long
arcade of the southern aisle to see that no one was watching, he
inspected the tokens, and cross-examined them on their knowledge of
their uncle.

His latest gift, the rosary, had come by the hand of Friar Hurst, a
begging Minorite of Southampton, who had it from another of his order at
Winchester, who had received it from one of the king's archers at the
Castle, with a message to Mistress Birkenholt that it came from her
brother, Master Randall, who had good preferment in London, in the house
of my Lord Archbishop of York, without whose counsel King Henry never
stirred. As to the coming of the agate and the pouncet box, the minds
of the boys were very hazy. They knew that the pouncet box had been
conveyed through the attendants of the Abbot of Beaulieu, but they were
only sure that from that time the belief had prevailed with their mother
that her brother was prospering in the house of the all-powerful Wolsey.
The good Augustinian, examining the tokens, thought they gave colour to
that opinion. The rosary and agate might have been picked up in an
ecclesiastical household, and the lid of the pouncet box was made of a
Spanish coin, likely to have come through some of the attendants of
Queen Katharine.

"It hath an appearance," he said. "I marvel whether there be still at
the Castle this archer who hath had speech with Master Randall, for if
ye know no more than ye do at present, 'tis seeking a needle in a bottle
of hay. But see, here come the brethren that be to sing Nones--sinner
that I am, to have said no Hours since the morn, being letted with
lawful business."

Again the unwilling Stephen had to submit. There was no feeling for the
incongruous in those days, and reverence took very different directions
from those in which it now shows itself, so that nobody had any
objection to Spring's pacing gravely with