“Thou art a good-hearted lad,” said the alderman with a hand on his shoulder. “There is no further danger of life to the prentice lads. The King hath sent to forbid all further dealing with them, and hath bidden my little maid to set it about that if their mothers beg them grace from good Queen Katherine, they shall have it. But this poor child! He can scarce be left. His brother will take it well of thee if thou wilt stay with him till some tendance can be had. We can see to that. Thanks be to St. George and our good King, this good City is our own again!” The alderman turned away, and Ambrose and Stephen exchanged a passionate embrace, feeling what it was to be still left to one another. The jester too shook his nephew’s hand, saying, “Boy, boy, the blessing of such as I is scarce worth the having, but I would thy mother could see thee this day.” Stephen was left with these words and his brother’s look to bear him through a trying time. For the “Captain of Newgate” was an autocrat, who looked on his captives as compulsory lodgers, out of whom he was entitled to wring as much as possible—as indeed he had no other salary, nor means of maintaining his underlings, a state of things which lasted for two hundred years longer, until the days of James Oglethorpe and John Howard. Even in the rare cases of acquittals, the prisoner could not be released till he had paid his fees, and that Giles Headley should have been borne off from the scaffold itself in debt to him was an invasion of his privileges, which did not dispose him to be favourable to any one connected with that affair; and he liked to show his power and dignity even to an alderman. He was found sitting in a comfortable tapestried chamber, handsomely dressed in orange and brown, and with a smooth sleek countenance and the appearance of a good-natured substantial citizen. He only half rose from his big carved chair, and touched without removing his cap, to greet the alderman, as he observed, without the accustomed prefix of your worship—“So, you are come about your prentice’s fees and dues. By St. Peter of the Fetters, ’tis an irksome matter to have such a troop of idle, mischievous, dainty striplings thrust on one, giving more trouble, and making more call and outcry than twice as many honest thieves and pickpurses.” “Be assured, sir, they will scarce trouble you longer than they can help,” said Master Headley. “Yea, the Duke and my Lord Edmund are making brief work of them,” quoth the jailer. “Ha!” with an oath, “what’s that? Nought will daunt those lads till the hangman is at their throats.”