t Margot, who, big, silent and flushed, was
devouring the celebrated hero of ballads with adoring eyes. He
laughed.

'That maid would kiss your feet. But, in these days, it is well to
make friends with them that keep doors. The fellow at yours would spit
upon you if he dared.'

Katharine said carelessly:

'Let him even spit in his imagination, and I shall whip him.'

The old knight looked out of the door. He left it wide open, so that
no man might listen.

'Why, he is still gone,' he said. He cleared his throat. 'See you,' he
began. 'So I should have said in the old days. These fellows then we
could slush open to bathe our feet in their warm blood when we came
tired-foot from hunting. Now it is otherwise. Such a loon may be a spy
set upon one.'

He turned stiffly and majestically to move back her new hangings that
only that day, in her absence at Privy Seal's, had been set in place.
He tapped spots in the wall with his broad and gentle fingers, talking
all the time with his broad back to her.

'See you, you have had here workmen to hang you a new arras. There be
tricks of boring ear-holes through walls in hanging these things. So
that if you have a cousin who shall catch a scullion by the
throat....'

Katharine said hastily:

'He hath heard little to harm me.'

'It is what a man swears he hath heard that shall harm one,' the old
knight answered. 'I meddle in no matters of statecraft, but I am sent
to you by certain ladies; one shall wed me and I am her servant; one
bears my name and wedded a good cousin of mine, now dead for his
treasons.'

Katharine said:

'I am beholden to Cicely Elliott and the Lady Rochford....'

He silenced her with one of his small gestures of old-fashioned
dignity and distinction.

'I meddle in none of these matters,' he said again. 'But these ladies
know that you hate one they hate.'

He said suddenly, 'Ah!' a little grunt of satisfaction. His fingers
tapping gently made what seemed a stone of the wall quiver and let
drop small flakes of plaster. He turned gravely upon Katharine:

'I do not ask what you spoke of with that worshipful swordsman,' he
said. 'But your servitor is gone to tell upon you. A stone is gone
from here and there is his ear-hole, like a drum of canvas.'

Katharine said swiftly:

'Take, then, a letter for me--to the Bishop of Winchester!'

He started back with a little exaggerated pantomime of horror.

'Must I go into your plots?' he asked, blinking