Something, however, had gone wrong in the stables; his horse had not been brought to the door at which he was to mount; and he had sent one after another, first a page, then a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and then Lord Rochester himself, to see what had become of the grooms and huntsmen, upon whose heads he bestowed a torrent of condemnation, in very profane and unkingly language. To ordinary observers it would have appeared that a more unpropitious moment could not have been selected for pressing a suit or asking a favour; but Sir Thomas Overbury knew King James as well as any one who was about him, and was aware that requests, which he would have denied flatly and resolutely when he had time for consideration, might often be wrung from him by importunity, in a moment of impatience and haste. The moment, then, that he saw Lord Rochester pass through the antechamber, he hurried to the King,--whom he knew to be now alone,--with a small slip of paper in hand half covered with writing. "Well, sir, well, where are the horses?" cried James, as soon as he saw him. "Those heathen fellows will let the fresh of the morning go by; and the sun's peeping out as hot as a kitchen fire, to drink up all the dew off the grass." "I think they mistook the hour your Majesty named," replied Overbury, "and, instead of a quarter before, made ready for a quarter after nine." "Body o' sin! did you ever hear the like of that?" cried James; "did they never go out to track a stag in the early morning? What have you got there? But if that's a supplication, man, you may as well spare your pains.--I'll have nothing to do with it.--Take it away." "It is not a supplication, may it please your Majesty," replied Overbury, "but a paper which your Majesty was pleased to say you would sign. You may remember the matter in which I moved you, sire, regarding my Lord Rochester and my Lady Arabella." "I'll not sign it, sir, I'll not sign it," cried the King, "I told you so before. She's got a hankering, sir, after that fellow Seymour, and I'll not sign it. If I was sure she would use it only to marry Carro, I don't say but that I might. But I will not have the other! Now look ye, young gentleman," he added, falling, imperceptibly to himself, into a disquisitional tone, "you are not without sense, and good parts, and judgment; and, while we have a minute to spare, we will condescend to instruct you as to our motives, which with kings--who are bound to exercise their sagacity upon fine points, that altogether escape the attention of ordinary men--are very different from the common motives of the people, or even of councillors, and men accustomed to broad and general state affairs." "I hear your Majesty with reverence and gratitude," replied Sir Thomas Overbury, in the fulsome style then used towards the Monarch, "and will lay to heart every word that falls from your lips, as the most precious guide to wisdom."