me tone:
'Aye, you are a great comforter. We shall see how the cat jumps,' and
then, answering his own question, 'Norfolk's niece?'

His body automatically grew upright, the limp disappeared from his
gait and he moved sturdily and gently towards them.

Culpepper faced round like a wild cat from a piece of meat, but seeing
the great hulk, the intent and friendly eyes, the gold collar over the
chest, the heavy hands, and the great feet that appeared to hold down
the very stones of the terrace, he stood rigid in a pose of
disturbance.

'Why do ye travel?' the King asked. 'This shall be Katharine Howard?'

Culpepper's hushed but harsh voice answered that they came out of
Lincolnshire on the Norfolk border. This was the Lord Edmund's
daughter.

'I have never seen her,' the King said.

'Sh'ath never been in this town.'

The King laughed: 'Why, poor wench!'

'Sh'ath been well schooled,' Culpepper answered proudly, 'hath had
mastern, hath sung, hath danced, hath your Latin and your Greek....
Hath ten daughters, her father.'

The King laughed again: 'Why, poor man!'

'Poorer than ever now,' Culpepper muttered. Katharine Howard stirred
uneasily and his face shot round to her. 'Rioters have brent his only
house and wasted all his sheep.'

The King frowned heavily: 'Anan? Who rioted?'

'These knaves that love not our giving our ploughlands to sheep,'
Culpepper said. 'They say they starved through it. Yet 'tis the only
way to wealth. I had all my wealth by it. By now 'tis well gone, but I
go to the wars to get me more.'

'Rioters?' the King said again, heavily.

''Twas a small tulzie--a score of starved yeomen here and there. I
killed seven. The others were they that were hanged at Norwich.... But
the barns were brent, the sheep gone, and the house down and the
servants fled. I am her cousin of the mother's side. Of as good a
strain as Howards be.'

Henry, with his eyes still upon them, beckoned behind his back for
Cromwell to come. A score or so of poor yeomen, hinds and women, cast
out of their tenancies that wool might be grown for the Netherlands
weavers, starving, desperate, and seeing no trace of might and order
in their hidden lands, had banded, broken a few hedges and burnt a few
barns before the posse of the country could come together and take
them.

The King had not heard of it or had forgotten it, because such risings
were so frequent. His brows came down into portentous and bulging
knots, his eyes