nd to implicate none but the Scotch lord, who was at
once harmless and unliable to be harmed.

'Lord Cassilis,' he brought out, 'said again that your lordship's head
should fall ere January goes out.'

He seemed to feel the great man's sneer through the darkness, and was
coldly angry with himself for having invented no better lie. For if
this invisible and threatening phantom that hid itself among these
shadows outlasted January he might yet outlast some of them. He
wondered which of Cromwell's innumerable ill-wishers it might best
serve him to serve. But for the Chancellor of the Augmentations the
heavy silence of calamity, like the waiting at a bedside for death to
come, seemed to fall upon them. He imagined that the Privy Seal hid
himself in that shadow in order to conceal a pale face and shaking
knees. But Cromwell's voice came harsh and peremptory to Throckmorton:

'What men be abroad at this night season? Ask my helmsmen.'

Two torchlights, far away to the right, wavered shaking trails in the
water that, thus revealed, shewed agitated and chopped by small waves.
The Chancellor's white beard shook with the cold, with fear of
Cromwell, and with curiosity to know how the man looked and felt. He
ventured at last in a faint and bleating voice:

What did his lordship think of this matter? Surely the King should
espouse this lady and the Lutheran cause.

Cromwell answered with inscrutable arrogance:

'Why, your cause is valuable. But this is a great matter. Get you in
if you be cold.'

Throckmorton appeared noiselessly at his elbow, whilst the Chancellor
was mumbling: 'God forbid I should be called Lutheran.'

The torches, Throckmorton said, were those of fishers who caught eels
off the mud with worms upon needles.

'Such night work favours treason,' Cromwell muttered. 'Write in my
notebook, "The Council to prohibit the fishing of eels by night."'

'What a nose he hath for treasons,' the Chancellor whispered to
Throckmorton as they rustled together into the cabin. Throckmorton's
face was gloomy and pensive. The Privy Seal had chosen none of his
informations for noting down. Assuredly the time was near for him to
find another master.

The barge swung round a reach, and the lights of the palace of
Greenwich were like a flight of dim or bright squares in mid air, far
ahead. The King's barge was already illuminating the crenellated arch
at the top of the river steps. A burst of torches flared out to meet
it an