her expressionlessly:

'It is very certain that you can not serve my lord with such a
firebrand to your tail,' he said. 'I will find him an errand.'

'But not where he shall be killed,' she said again.

'Why,' he said slowly, 'I will send him where he will make a great
fortune.'

'A great fortune would help him little,' she answered. 'I would have
him sent where he may fight evenly matched.'

He laid his hand upon her wrist.

'He is in as much danger here as anywhere. This is not Lincolnshire,
but an ordered Court.'--A man drew his sword with some peril there,
for there were laws against it. If men came brawling in the maids'
quarters at nights there were penalties of losing fingers, hands, or
even heads. And the maids themselves were liable to be whipped.--He
shook his head at her:

'If your cousin hath so violent an inclination to you I were your best
friend to send him far away.'

It was in his mind that if they were to breed this girl to be a spy
they must keep her protected from madmen. Something of mystery in his
manner penetrated to her quick senses.

'God help me, what a dangerous place this is!' she said. 'I would I
had never spoken to you of my cousin.'

He eyed her solemnly and said that if she were minded to wed this
roaring boy they might both, and soon, earn fortunes to buy them land
in a distant shire.

III

The young Poins, in his scarlet and black, drew his sister into a
corner of the hall in which the gentry of the Lords that were there
had already dined. It was a vast place, used as a rule for hearing
suitors to the Lord Privy Seal and for the audit dinners of his
tenantry in London. On its whitened walls there were trophies of arms,
and between the wall and the platform at the end of the hall was a
small space convenient for private talk. The rest of the people there
were playing round games for kissing forfeits or clustered round a
magician who had brought a large ape to tell fortunes by the _Sortes
Virgilianae_. It fumbled about in the pages of a black-letter AEneid,
and scratched its side voluptuously: taking its own time it looked at
the pages attentively with a mournful parody of an aged sage, and set
its finger upon a line that the fates directed.

'Here's a great ado about thee,' Poins said, laughing at his sister.
'Thy name is up in this town of London.'

He had come in the bodyguard of the Queen, and had made time to slip
round to old Badge's low house behind the wall i