rs he loved to speak of, was "good against inflammations."

Anthony came to him one morning, thinking to please him, and brought him
a root that he had bought from a travelling pedlar just outside the
gateway.

"This is a mandrake root, your Grace; I heard you speak of it the other
day."

The Archbishop took it, smiling, felt it carefully, peered at it a minute
or two. "No, my son," he said, "I fear you have met a knave. This is
briony-root carved like a mandrake into the shape of a man's legs. It is
worthless, I fear; but I thank you for the kind thought, Mr. Norris," and
he gave the root back to him. "And the stories we hear of the mandrake, I
fear, are fables, too. Some say that they only grow beneath gallows from
that which falls there; that the male grows from the corruption of a
man's body; and the female from that of a woman's; but that is surely a
lie, and a foul one, too. And then folks say that to draw it up means
death; and that the mandrake screams terribly as it comes up; and so they
bid us tie a dog to it, and then drive the dog from it so as to draw it
up so. I asked Mr. Baker, the chirurgeon in the household of my Lord
Oxford, the other day, about that; and he said that such tales be but
doltish dreams and old wives' fables. But the true mandrake is a clean
and wholesome plant. The true ointment Populeon should have the juice of
the leaves in it; and the root boiled and strained causes drowsiness. It
hath a predominate cold faculty, Galen saith; but its true home is not in
England at all. It comes from Mount Garganus in Apulia."

It was pathetic, Anthony thought sometimes, that this old prelate should
be living so far from the movements of the time, owing to no fault of his
own. During these months the great tragedy of Campion's passion was
proceeding a couple of miles away; but the Archbishop thought less of it
than of the death of an old tree. The only thing from the outside world
that seemed to ruffle him was the behaviour of the Puritans. Anthony was
passing through "le velvet-room" one afternoon when he heard voices in
the Presence Chamber beyond; and almost immediately heard the Archbishop,
who had recognised his step, call his name. He went in and found him with
a stranger in a dark sober dress.

"Take this gentleman to Mr. Scot," he said, "and ask him to give him some
refreshment; for that he must be gone directly."

When Anthony had taken the gentleman to the steward, he returned to the
Ar