either.'

Whilst she was finishing her letter, Katharine Howard prayed that Mary
the Mother of Mercy might soften the hatred of this daughter, even as,
of old times, she had turned the heart of Lucius the Syracusan. Then
there should be an end to plotting and this letter might work no ill.

Having waved the sheet of paper in the air to dry it, Mary crumpled it
into a ball.

'See you,' she said, 'if this miscarry I run a scant risk. For, if
this be a treason, this treason is well enough known already to them
you wot of. They might have had my head this six years on one shift or
another had they so dared. So to me it matters little.--But for
thee--and for thy maid Margot and this maid's brother and his house
and his father and his leman--death may fall on ye all if this ball of
paper miscarry.'

Katharine made no answer and her mistress spoke on.

'Take now this paper ball, give it to thy maid Margot, bid thy maid
Margot bear it to her brother Ned.' Her brother Ned should place it in
his sleeve and walk with it to Herring Lane at Hampton. There, over
against the house of the Sieur Chapuys, who was the Emperor's
ambassador to this Christian nation--over against that house there was
a cookshop to which resorted the servants of the ambassador. Passing
it by, Katharine's maid's brother should thrust his hand in at the
door and cry 'a pox on all stinking Kaiserliks and Papists,'--and he
should cast the paper at that cook's head. Then out would come master
cook to his door and claim reparation. And for reparation Margot's
brother Ned should buy such viands as the cook should offer him. These
viands he was to bring, as a good brother should, to his hungry
sister, and these viands his sister should take to her room--which was
Katharine's room. 'And, of an evening,' she finished, 'I shall come to
thy room to commune with thee of the writers that be dead and yet
beloved. Hast thou the lesson by heart? I will say it again.'

III

It was in that way, however sorely against her liking, that Katharine
Howard came into a plot. It subdued her, it seemed to age her, it was
as if she had parted with some virtue. When again she spoke with the
King, who came to loll in his daughter's armed chair one day out of
every week, it troubled her to find that she could speak to him with
her old tranquillity. She was ashamed at feeling no shame, since all
the while these letters were passing behind his back. Once even he had
been talking to