'Truly,' he bleated piteously, 'it stands in the register of the Augmentations as the worshipful knight says.' Cromwell cried out, in a studied rage: 'I made thee and I made thy office: I will unmake the one and the other if it and thou know no better law.' 'God help me,' the Chancellor gasped. He shrank again into the shadow of the chimney, and his blinking eyes fell upon Cromwell's back with a look of dread and the hatred of a beast that is threatened at the end of its hole. 'Sir,' Cromwell frowned darkly upon Ughtred, 'the law stands thus if the Augmentation people know it not. This farm and others were given to your late brother upon his marriage, that the sister of the Queen might have a proper state. The Statute of Uses hath here no say. Understand me: It was the King's to give; it is the King's still.' He opened his mouth so wide that he appeared to bellow. 'That farm falleth to the survivor of those two, who is now my son's wife. What judge shall gainsay that?' He swayed his body round on his motionless and sturdily planted legs, veering upon the Chancellor and the knight in turn, as if he challenged them to gainsay him who had been an attorney for ten years after he had been a wool merchant. Ughtred shrugged his shoulders heavily, and the Chancellor hastened to bleat: 'No judge shall gainsay your lordship. Your lordship hath an excellent knowledge of the law.' 'Why hast thou not as good a one?' Cromwell rated him. 'I made thee since I thought thou hadst.' The Chancellor choked in his throat and waved his hands. 'Thus the law is,' Cromwell said to Ughtred. 'And if it were not so Parliament should pass an Act so to make it. For it is a scandal that a Queen's sister, an aunt of the Prince that shall be King, should lose her lands upon the death of her husband. It savours of treason that you should ask it. I have known men go to the Tower upon less occasion.' 'Well, I am a broken man,' Sir Leonard muttered. 'Why, God help you,' Cromwell said. 'Get you gone. The law takes no account of whether a man be broken, but seeketh to do honour to the King's Highness and to render justice.' Viridus and Sadler, who was another of Cromwell's secretaries, had come in whilst Privy Seal had been speaking, and Cromwell turned upon them laughing as the knight went out, his head hanging. 'Here is another broken man,' he said, and they all laughed together. 'Well, he is another very notable swordsman,' Viridus said. 'We might well post him at Milan, lest Pole flee back to Rome that way.' Cromwell turned upon the Chancellor with a bitter contempt. 'Find thou for this knight some monk's lands in Kent. He shall to Milan with them for a price.' Viridus laughed. 'Now we shall soon have these broken swordsmen in every town of Italy between France and Rome. Such a net Pole shall not easily break through.' 'It were well he were done with soon,' Cromwell said. 'The King shall love us much the more; and it is time.'