"Yes!" I answered, rousing myself all at once. "What is life to me?" "A means whereby you may serve God and his church," answered Mistress Curtis, solemnly. "Can you collect your wits and listen to me?" I felt once more come over me that strange feeling of peace and strength which had been given me before. "I will do any thing for my mistress," I said. "Then listen. You know Gardiner is our lady's implacable enemy. Already he threatens her with a strict examination, which can have but one end, for she will never deny her faith. Master Batie hath already gone abroad, leaving us instructions what to do. This very night, if at all, my lady must make her escape to meet her husband, at a little town in the Dutchy of Cleves. You can be of the greatest use to us, as you can speak both Dutch and Latin, and perhaps, French also—" "Yes," I answered. "I can speak French well, and can make a shift to express myself in Spanish, if need." (So I could, for having always a fancy for learning languages, I had picked up a little Spanish from a lady in Rotterdam.) "I see what you would have, and I am ready. Whom does my mistress take in her company?" "Why, our two selves and John Symonds. Then we may depend upon you, my dear, faithful, afflicted child?" "Yes," I answered. "I have no more place in these parts," and with that I fell a-weeping, and my kind friend wept with me. We could not indulge our tears very long, however. There was too much to be done. My lady professed to be ill at ease, and kept her chamber, and Mistress Curtis threw out vague hints of the sweating sickness, and kept all the maids at a distance. All that day, I worked busily enough, packing my lady's most portable jewels in the smallest compass, and curiously reminded of the time when I prepared mine own for the flight to the old hall. I carried only bare necessary clothes for myself, besides my Bible and Psalter, and a little book of prayers, which had been Walter's. There was some grand show going on, I forget what it was, but something connected with the new queen's doings. Already the mass was being sung every where. Gardiner and his companions were high in court favor, and poor Archbishop Cranmer, to whose gentle intercessions with her father, the queen had owed her life, was disgraced and confined. The Popish party now held their heads high, ay, and the highest were those who had made the greatest show of conforming in King Edward's days, and been the most ready to truckle to the humors of King Henry. Such was Gardiner himself, who made himself so conspicuous in putting down the religious houses, and his bulldog, Bonner.