In truth Stephen’s health had suffered enough to change the bold, high-spirited, active lad, so that he hardly knew himself. He was quite incapable of work all the next day, and Mistress Headley began to dread that he had brought home jail fever, and insisted on his being inspected by the barber-surgeon, Todd, who proceeded to bleed the patient, in order, as he said, to carry off the humours contracted in the prison. He had done the same by Jasper Hope, and by Giles, but he followed the treatment up with better counsel, namely, that the lads should all be sent out of the City to some farm where they might eat curds and whey, until their strength should be restored. Thus they would be out of reach of the sweating sickness which was already in some of the purlieus of St. Katharine’s Docks, and must be specially dangerous in their lowered condition. Master Hope came in just after this counsel had been given. He had a sister married to the host of a large prosperous inn near Windsor, and he proposed to send not only Jasper but Stephen thither, feeling how great a debt of gratitude he owed to the lad. Remembering well the good young Mistress Streatfield, and knowing that the Antelope was a large old house of excellent repute, where she often lodged persons of quality attending on the court or needing country air, Master Headley added Giles to the party at his own expense, and wished also to send Dennet for greater security, only neither her grandmother nor Mrs. Hope could leave home. It ended, however, in Perronel Randall being asked to take charge of the whole party, including Aldonza. That little damsel had been in a manner confided to her both by the Dean of St. Paul’s and by Tibble Steelman—and indeed the motherly woman, after nursing and soothing her through her first despair at the loss of her father, was already loving her heartily, and was glad to give her a place in the home which Ambrose was leaving on being made an attendant on Sir Thomas More. For the interview at the Deanery was satisfactory. The young man, after a good supper, enlivened by the sweet singing of some chosen pupils of St. Paul’s school, was called up to where the Dean sat, and with him, the man of the peculiarly sweet countenance, with the noble and deep expression, yet withal, something both tender and humorous in it. They made him tell his whole life, and asked many questions about Abenali, specially about the fragment of Arabic scroll which had been clutched in his hand even as he lay dying. They much regretted never having known of his existence till too late. “Jewels lie before the unheeding!” said More. Then Ambrose was called on to show a specimen of his own penmanship, and to write from Sir Thomas’s dictation in English and in Latin. The result was that he was engaged to act as one of the clerks Sir Thomas employed in his occupations alike as lawyer, statesman, and scholar.