friends....' She faltered,
and her impulse carried her no further. Rochford tapped her flushed
cheek gently with his glove, but a light and hushing step in the
corridor made them all silent.

The Magister Udal stood before the door blinking his eyes at the
light; Katharine addressed him imperiously--

'You will carry a letter for me to save my cousin from death.'

He started, and leered at Margot, who was ready to sink into the
ground.

'Why, I had rather carry a bull to the temple of Jupiter, as Macrobius
has it,' he said, 'meaning that....'

'Yet you have drunk with him,' Katharine interrupted him hotly, 'you
have gone hurling through the night with him. You have shamed me
together.'

'Yet I cannot forget Tully,' he answered sardonically, 'who warns me
that a prudent man should be able to moderate the course of his
friendship, even as he reins his horse. _Est prudentis sustinere ut
cursum_....'

'Mark you that!' the old knight said to Katharine. 'I will get my boy
to read to me out of Tully, for that is excellent wisdom.'

'God help me, this is Christendom!' Katharine said, bitterly. 'Shall
one abandon one that lay in the same cradle with one?'

'Your ladyship hath borne with him a day too long,' Udal said. 'He
beat me like a dog five days since. Have you heard of the city called
Ponceropolis, founded by the King Philip? Your good cousin should be
ruler of that city, for the Great King peopled it with all the
brawlers, cut-throats, and roaring boys of his dominions, to be rid of
them.' She became aware that he was very angry, for his whisper shook
like the neigh of a horse.

The old knight winked at Margot.

'Why this is a monstrous wise man,' he said, 'who yet speaks some
sense.'

'In short,' the magister said, 'If you will stick to this man, you
shall lose me. For I have taken beatings and borne no malice--as in
the case of men with whose loves or wives I have prospered better than
themselves. But that this man should miscall me and beat me for the
pure frenzy of his mind, causelessly, and for the love of blows! That
is unbearable. To-night I walk for the first time after five days
since he did beat me. And I ask you whom you shall here find the
better servant?'

His thin figure was suddenly shaking with rage.

'Why, this is conspiracy!' Katharine cried.

'A conspiracy!' Udal's voice rose up into a shriek. 'If your ladyship
were a Queen I would not be a Queen's cousin's whipping post.' His
arms