Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, had builded him a new tennis court in where his stables had been before poverty had caused him to sell the major part of his horseflesh. He called to him the Duke of Norfolk, who was of the Papist cause, and Sir Henry Wriothesley who was always betwixt and between, according as the cat jumped, to see this new building of his that was made of a roofed-in quadrangle where the stable doors were bricked up or barred to make the grille. But though Norfolk and Wriothesley came very early in the afternoon, while it was yet light, to his house, they wasted most of the daylight hours in talking of things indifferent before they went to their inspection of this court. They stood talking in a long gallery beneath very high windows, and there were several chaplains and young priests and young gentlemen with them, and most of the talk was of a bear-baiting that there should be in Smithfield come Saturday. Sir Henry Wriothesley matched seven of his dogs against the seven best of the Duke's, that they should the longer hold to the bear once they were on him, and most of the young gentlemen wagered for Sir Henry's dogs that he had bred from a mastiff out of Portugal. But when this talk had mostly died down, and when already twilight had long fallen, the Bishop said-- 'Come, let us visit this new tennis place of mine. I think I shall show you somewhat that you have not before seen.' He bade, however, his gentlemen and priests to stay where they were, for they had all many times seen the court or building. When he led the way, prelatical and black, for the Duke and Wriothesley, into the lower corridors of his house, the priests and young gentlemen bowed behind his back, one at the other. In the courtyard there were four hounds of a heavy and stocky breed that came bounding and baying all round them, so that it was only by vigilance that Gardiner could save Wriothesley's shins, for he was a man that all dogs and children hated. 'Sirs,' the Bishop said, 'these dogs that ye see and hear will let no man but me--not even my grooms or stablemen--pass this yard. I have bred them to that so I may be secret when I will.' He set the key in the door that was in the bottom wall of the court. 'There is no other door here save that which goes into the stable where the grille is. There I have a door to enter and fetch out the balls that pass there.' In the court itself it was absolute blackness. 'I trow we may talk very well without lights,' he said. 'Come into this far corner.' Yet, though there was no fear of being overheard, each of these three stole almost on tiptoe and held his breath, and in the dark and shadowy place they made a more dark and more shadowy patch with their heads all close together. Suddenly it was as if the Bishop dropped the veil that covered his passions.