and not trouble father, because uncle Ambrose is so
downcast because they have cut off the head of good Sir Thomas More."

"Yet," said the visitor, "methinks your father would hear of an old
comrade. Or stay, where be Tibble Steelman and Kit Smallbones?"

"Tibble is in the hall, well-nigh as sad as uncle Ambrose," began Dick;
but Giles, better able to draw conclusions, exclaimed, "Tibble! Kit!
You know them, sir! Oh! are you the Giles Headley that ran away to be a
soldier ere I was born? Kit! Kit! see here--" as the giant, broader
and perhaps a little more bent, but with little loss of strength, came
forward out of his hut, and taking up the matter just where it had been
left fourteen years before, demanded as they shook hands, "Ah, Master
Giles, how couldst thou play me such a scurvy trick?"

"Nay, Kit, was it not best for all that I turned my back to make way for
honest Stephen?"

By this time young Giles had rushed up the stair to the hall, where, as
he said truly, Stephen was giving his brother such poor comfort as could
be had from sympathy, when listening to the story of the cheerful, brave
resignation of the noblest of all the victims of Henry the Eighth.
Ambrose had been with Sir Thomas well-nigh to the last, had carried
messages between him and his friends during his imprisonment, had handed
his papers to him at his trial, had been with Mrs Roper when she broke
through the crowd and fell on his neck as he walked from Westminster
Hall with the axe-edge turned towards him; had received his last kind
farewell, counsel, and blessing, and had only not been with him on the
scaffold because Sir Thomas had forbidden it, saying, in the old strain
of mirth, which never forsook him, "Nay, come not, my good friend. Thou
art of a queasy nature, and I would fain not haunt thee against thy
will."

All was over now, the wise and faithful head had fallen, because it
would not own the wrong for the right; and Ambrose had been brought home
by his brother, a being confounded, dazed, seeming hardly able to think
or understand aught save that the man whom he had above all loved and
looked up to was taken from him, judicially murdered, and by the King.
The whole world seemed utterly changed to him, and as to thinking or
planning for himself, he was incapable of it; indeed, he looked
fearfully ill. His little nephew came up to his father's knee, pausing,
though open-mouthed, and at the first token of permission, bursting o