n order to beg from
his grandfather ten crowns to pay for a cloak he had lost at cards.

'Such a cackle among these Lutherans,' he mocked at Margot. 'Heard you
no hootings as your lady rode here behind us of the guard?'

'I heard none, nor she deserveth none,' Margot answered. 'For I love
her most well.'

'Aye, she hath done a rape on thee,' he laughed. 'Aye, our good uncle
hath printed a very secret libel upon her.' He began to whisper: Let
it not be known or a sudden vengeance might fall upon their house. It
was no small matter to print unlicensed broadsides. But their moody
uncle was out of all fear of consequences, so mad with rage. 'He would
have broken my back, because I tore thee from his tender keeping.'

'Sure it was never so tender,' Margot said. 'When was there a day that
he did not beat me?' But he would have married her to his apprentice,
a young fellow with a golden tongue, that preached every night to a
secret congregation in a Cripplegate cellar.

'Why, an thou observest my maxims,' the boy said, sententiously, 'I
will have thee a great lady. But uncle hath printed this libel, and
tongues are at work in Austin Friars.' It was said that this was a new
Papist plot. Margot was but the first that they should carry off. The
Duke and Bishop Gardiner were reported to have signed papers for
abducting all the Lutheran virgins in London. They were to be led from
the paths of virtue into Catholic lewdnesses, and all their boys were
to be abducted and sent into monasteries across the seas.

'Thus the race of Lutherans should die out,' he laughed. 'Why they are
hiding their maidens in pigeon-houses in Holborn. A boy called Hugh
hath gone out and never come home, and it is said that masked men in
black stuff gowns were seen to put him into a sack in Moorfields.'

'Well, here be great marvels,' Margot laughed.

He shook his red sides, and his blue eyes grew malicious and teasing:

'Such a strumpet as thy lady,' he uttered. 'A Papist Howard that is
known to have been loved by twenty men in Lincoln.'

Margot passed from laughter into hot anger:

'It is a marvel God strikes not their tongues with palsy that said
that,' she said swiftly. 'Why do you not kill some of them if you be a
man?'

'Why, be calmed,' he said. 'You have heard such tales before now. It
is no more than saying that a woman goes not to their churches to
pray.'

A young Marten Pewtress, half page, half familiar to the Earl of
Surrey, came