"Ah, truly, Gregory Nelson," said she, setting a fist upon either hip and speaking very high and scornful, "when Providence gave thee me to wife, He gave thee a notable blessing, and one of a pleasant aptitude to discourse, yet not beyond discretion, as we women have a name (though without warrant) to go. But in giving thee to me, He furnished me with nought but an ill-painted sign of the Dumb Man, so out of all reason dost thou hide and dissemble thy thoughts. Why, I had as lief be married to Aldgate Pump as to thee, for all the news thou impartest, or comfort got of thee by the mouth's way; which was sure the way intended of Him that made us with mouths and a comprehension of things spoken. Yea, a very stockfish took I to mate in thee, Gregory, whose habitation should be in Fishmongers Row, on a trestle-stall of Billingsgate." The cogency of this speech of the warden's wife, great as it might be in abuse, was yet so small in its effect upon her husband, that I was fain to relate to the poor woman (who loved me for it ever after) the whole story of Botolph Cleeve's imprisonment in the Tower, which her husband had (so far prudently) kept silence upon. "Poor man," cried she pitifully when she knew all, "ah, these poor solitary prisoners! I marvel how good men can find it in their hearts to guard them from escaping thence. Were I a yeoman now," she added, with an eye askance upon the sergeant and after upon her husband, "I would suffer all such freely to depart thence without challenge, as desired it, or at least such as led a Christian life and loved their wives." "Is my uncle kindly dealt with there?" I demanded of the yeoman, but to that question he hesitated so long in his reply that I cried-- "If he be not, 'tis ill done, so to use a man that I hope to prove innocent of this charge." "'Tis because he is innocent belike, poor soul," quoth Madam Nelson, "that they do so use him. In this world it hath ever been the virtuous whose faces are ground." "Do you know where his dungeon is situate?" I asked, starting to my feet as though I would go (and meant to) at once to the Lord Constable, "or if not you, then who doth know it?" "None doth," he answered me slowly, "because he is not in the Tower." "What mean you?" cried I, as soon as I could for astonishment. "My uncle is not a prisoner there?" "I trow otherwise!" retorted the warden's wife, who saw her pity ill bestowed if she believed him. "There hath been none of his name apprehended, nor none of his description," said the yeoman. "Then where is he?" I cried out bitterly, for I well enough perceived that all that great sum which we had been enticed into spending was for nothing lost, and ourselves beggars upon the mere fetch and cozening imposture of a knave. "Where he may be I know not," said the Bridge warden, before the yeoman could answer me, "but I think you came as near to him as might be, when you gave your money into the hands of Mr. John Skene."