“And if it does, why, curse you, so shall yours, you evil spirit!” Sir Barton cried with a fierce outbreak of temper, the mocking tone of Sanders having struck him like a goad. “Pshaw!” retorted the wizard, coolly, “why fall out so swiftly? I do not fear you, man, or any one. Think you I am so great a fool as to play this game and lose? Who was it that dealt secretly with the Nun of Kent?” He was watching the other with malicious enjoyment; noting the start of amazement and fear, he leaned back and laughed with a fiendish delight that enraged the dark man still more. “You are a fiend!” Sir Barton said between his set teeth. “I tell you, Sanders, if you betray me, I will send you to the devil before you can grin that hellish grin of yours twice.” Undaunted either by the threats or the furious aspect of the man, the little wizard laughed with apparently intense amusement. “Come, come, Sir Barton,” he said mockingly, “sit, man; ’tis not in your horoscope that you should murder me. I find you useful,” he added in a changed tone, “and you, I believe, have found me so. Waste no more threats upon me; I fear you as little as the snake that I keep in my chamber, and whose fangs I drew long since, although he is still excellent to scare women and children. Save your excessive fury until such time as the Spaniards and the Irish come to set my Lady Mary on the throne, when we shall live right merrily again and this same king shall die as did the man-queller Richard.” “If we die not first and rot for our part in it,” retorted his companion, sullenly, having recovered his composure. “You are not wont to be so downcast, Sir Barton,” the astrologer remarked, “nor need be. Cromwell’s new notion of parish registers is working for us among the vulgar; they believe it but a design to find the means of taxing them, and that they shall no longer eat white meat or fowls without paying dues to the king’s grace. More than half this realm is with us; and of the peers, from his grace of Norfolk down, I think they love not the new order of things, nor do they like the rule of the cloth-shearer’s son.” “Ay,” replied his companion, “we are like to have Lord Hussey and Darcy, besides the Nevilles and the faction of the White Rose. ’Tis certain we can raise the northern counties when the time is ripe, and then, the devil take me if I be not the first to thrust a sword in Cromwell’s belly!” He rose as he spoke and took up his weapon, handling it as if he loved the thought of the use for which he intended it. “The devil is very like to have thee, friend,” retorted the wizard, smiling; “but hark! what stir is that without? Some new-comers are in the courtyard.” Sir Barton walked to the door, and pushing back the slide which had closed the window in the panel, he looked into the public room.