By this time young Giles had rushed up the stair to the hall, where, as he said truly, Stephen was giving his brother such poor comfort as could be had from sympathy, when listening to the story of the cheerful, brave resignation of the noblest of all the victims of Henry VIII. Ambrose had been with Sir Thomas well-nigh to the last, had carried messages between him and his friends during his imprisonment, had handed his papers to him at his trial, had been with Mrs. Roper when she broke through the crowd and fell on his neck as he walked from Westminster Hall with the axe-edge turned towards him; had received his last kind farewell, counsel, and blessing, and had only not been with him on the scaffold because Sir Thomas had forbidden it, saying, in the old strain of mirth, which never forsook him, “Nay, come not, my good friend. Thou art of a queasy nature, and I would fain not haunt thee against thy will.” All was over now, the wise and faithful head had fallen, because it would not own the wrong for the right; and Ambrose had been brought home by his brother, a being confounded, dazed, seeming hardly able to think or understand aught save that the man whom he had above all loved and looked up to was taken from him, judicially murdered, and by the King. The whole world seemed utterly changed to him, and as to thinking or planning for himself, he was incapable of it; indeed, he looked fearfully ill. His little nephew came up to his father’s knee, pausing, though open-mouthed, and at the first token of permission, bursting out, “Oh! father! Here’s a soldier in the court! Kit is talking to him. And he is Giles Headley that ran away. He has a beauteous Spanish leathern coat, and a belt with silver bosses—and a morion that Phil Smallbones saith to be of Milan, but I say it is French.” Stephen had no sooner gathered the import of this intelligence than he sprang down almost as rapidly as his little boy, with his welcome. Nor did Giles Headley return at all in the dilapidated condition that had been predicted. He was stout, comely, and well fleshed, and very handsomely clad and equipped in a foreign style, with nothing of the lean wolfish appearance of Sir John Fulford. The two old comrades heartily shook one another by the hand in real gladness at the meeting. Stephen’s welcome was crossed by the greeting and inquiry whether all was well. “Yea. The alderman is hale and hearty, but aged. Your mother is tabled at a religious house at Salisbury.” “I know. I landed at Southampton and have seen her.” “And Dennet,” Stephen added with a short laugh, “she could not wait for you.” “No, verily. Did I not wot well that she cared not a fico for me? I hoped when I made off that thou wouldst be the winner, Steve, and I am right glad thou art, man.”