are cap two generations old; and, in his
old eyes that had seen three generations of changes, it twinkled
starrily as if they were spinning round. In the cock forward of his
shaven chin, and the settling down of his head into his shoulders,
there was a suggestion of sinister and sardonic malice. He was
muttering at his son:

'A stiff neck that knows no bending, God shall break one day.'

His son, square, dark, with his sleeves rolled up showing immense
muscles developed at the levers of his presses, bent his black beard
and frowned his heavy brows above his printings.

'Doubtless God shall break His engine when its work is done,' he
muttered.

'You call Privy Seal God's engine?' the old man quavered ironically.
'Thomas Cromwell is a brewer's drunken son. I know them that have seen
him in the stocks at Putney not thirty years ago.'

The printer set two proofs side by side on the table and frowningly
compared them, shaking his head.

'He is the flail of the monks,' he said abstractedly. 'They would have
burned me and thousands more but for him.'

'Aye, and he has put up a fine wall where my arbour stood.'

The printer took a chalk from behind his ear and made a score down his
page.

'A wall,' he muttered; 'my Lord Privy Seal hath set up a wall against
priestcraft all round these kingdoms----'

'Therefore you would have him welcome to forty feet of my garden?'
the old man drawled. 'He pulls down other folks' crucifixes and sets
up his own walls with other folks' blood for mortar.'

The printer said darkly:

'Papists' blood.'

The old man pulled his nose and glanced down.

'We were all Papists in my day. I have made the pilgrimage to
Compostella, for all you mock me now.'

He turned his head to see Magister Udal entering the door furtively
and with eyes that leered round the room. Both the Badges fell into
sudden, and as if guilty, silence.

'_Domus parva, quies magna_,' the magister tittered, and swept across
the rushes in his furs to rub his hands before the fire. 'When shall I
teach your Margot the learned tongues?'

'When the sun sets in the East,' the printer muttered.

Udal sent to him over his shoulder, as words of consolation:

'The new Queen is come to Rochester.'

The printer heaved an immense sigh:

'God be praised!'

Udal snickered, still over his shoulder:

'You see, neither have the men of the Old Faith put venom in her food,
nor have the Emperor's galleys taken her between Calai