e voice came back
mockingly. 'Goodman Gilmaw had many sheep died of the rot because it
rained seven weeks on end. So, coming back from a market-day, with too
much ale for prudence and too little for silence, he cried, "_Curse on
this rain! The weather was never good since knaves ruled about the
King._" So that came to the ears of Privy Seal, who made a treason of
it, and had his sheep, and his house, and his lands, and his head. He
was but one in ten thousand that have gone the same road home from
market and made speeches as treasonable.'

'Thus poor Gilmaw died?' Katharine asked. 'What a foul world this is!'

'Time it was cleansed,' he answered.

He let his words rankle for a time, then he said softly: 'Privy Seal's
words before his armoury were as treasonable as Gilmaw's on the market
road.'

Again he paused.

'Privy Seal may call thee to account for such a treason,' he said
afterwards. 'He holdeth thee in a hollow of his hand.'

She did not speak.

He said softly: 'It is a folly to be too proud to fight the world with
the world's weapons.'

The heavy darkness seemed to thrill with her silence. He could tell
neither whether she were pondering his words nor whether she still
scorned him. He could not even hear her breathing.

'God help me!' he said at last, in an angry high note, 'I am not such
a man as to be played with too long. People fear me.'

She kept silence still, and his voice grew high and shrill: 'Madam
Howard, I can bend you to my will. I have the power to make such a
report of you as will hang you to-morrow.'

Her voice came to him expressionlessly--without any inflexion. In few
words, what would he have of her? She played his own darkness off
against him, so that he could tell nothing new of her mood.

He answered swiftly: 'I will that you tell the men you know what I
have told you. You are a very little thing; it were no more to me to
cut you short than to drown a kitten. But my own neck I prize. What I
have told you I would have come to the ears of my lord of Winchester.
I may not be seen to speak with him myself. If you will not tell him,
another will; but I would rather it were you.'

'Evil dreams make thy nights hideous!' she cried out so suddenly that
his voice choked in his throat. 'Thou art such dirt as I would avoid
to tread upon; and shall I take thee into my hand?' She was panting
with disgust and scorn. 'I have listened to thee; listen thou to me.
Thou art so filthy that if th