He said: 'For three weeks only. Then the Scots came on too thick and fast to waste time.' His dark eyes blinked and his broad lips moved humorously with his beard. 'I swore to do service to any lady; pray you let me serve you.' 'You can do me a service,' she said. He moved his hand to silence her. 'Pray you take it not amiss. But there is one that hates you.' She said: 'Perhaps there are a many; but do me a service if you will.' 'Look you,' he said, 'these times are no times of mine. But I know it is prudent to have servitors that love one. I saw yours shake a fist at your door.' Katharine said: 'A man?' She looked at Margot, who, big, silent and flushed, was devouring the celebrated hero of ballads with adoring eyes. He laughed. 'That maid would kiss your feet. But, in these days, it is well to make friends with them that keep doors. The fellow at yours would spit upon you if he dared.' Katharine said carelessly: 'Let him even spit in his imagination, and I shall whip him.' The old knight looked out of the door. He left it wide open, so that no man might listen. 'Why, he is still gone,' he said. He cleared his throat. 'See you,' he began. 'So I should have said in the old days. These fellows then we could slush open to bathe our feet in their warm blood when we came tired-foot from hunting. Now it is otherwise. Such a loon may be a spy set upon one.' He turned stiffly and majestically to move back her new hangings that only that day, in her absence at Privy Seal's, had been set in place. He tapped spots in the wall with his broad and gentle fingers, talking all the time with his broad back to her. 'See you, you have had here workmen to hang you a new arras. There be tricks of boring ear-holes through walls in hanging these things. So that if you have a cousin who shall catch a scullion by the throat....' Katharine said hastily: 'He hath heard little to harm me.' 'It is what a man swears he hath heard that shall harm one,' the old knight answered. 'I meddle in no matters of statecraft, but I am sent to you by certain ladies; one shall wed me and I am her servant; one bears my name and wedded a good cousin of mine, now dead for his treasons.' Katharine said: 'I am beholden to Cicely Elliott and the Lady Rochford....' He silenced her with one of his small gestures of old-fashioned dignity and distinction. 'I meddle in none of these matters,' he said again. 'But these ladies know that you hate one they hate.' He said suddenly, 'Ah!' a little grunt of satisfaction. His fingers tapping gently made what seemed a stone of the wall quiver and let drop small flakes of plaster. He turned gravely upon Katharine: 'I do not ask what you spoke of with that worshipful swordsman,' he said. 'But your servitor is gone to tell upon you. A stone is gone from here and there is his ear-hole, like a drum of canvas.' Katharine said swiftly: 'Take, then, a letter for me--to the Bishop of Winchester!'