I did wonder, for the name of the gay and brilliant Duchess of Suffolk was well known even to me, a country lad. Her former husband, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, had been not only the one trusted and constant friend of King Henry the Eighth, but the king's brother-in-law, his first wife having been Mary, Princess of England and Queen Dowager of France. Late in his splendid and prosperous career the Duke had married Katherine, the heiress of Lord Willoughby de Eresby, and she it was who stood before me, still young and handsome. After her husband's death she had made England ring with her name, first by a love match with a Lincolnshire squire, and secondly by her fearless and outspoken defense of the reformers. I did wonder indeed how she had come to be wandering in the streets at daybreak, an object of a chance passer's chivalry and pity. "It is simple enough," she said dryly; "I am rich, I am a Protestant, and I have an enemy. When I do not like a person I speak out. Do I not, Richard?" "You do indeed, my dear," he answered smiling. "And once I spoke out to Bishop Gardiner. What! Do you know Stephen Gardiner?" For I had started at the name, after which I could scarcely have concealed my knowledge if I would. So I answered simply, "Yes, I have seen him." I was thinking how wonderful this was. These people had been utter strangers to me until a day or two before, yet now we were all looking out together from the deck of a Dutch boat on the low Dutch landscape, united by one tie, the enmity of the same man. "He is a man to be dreaded," the Duchess continued, her eyes resting on her baby, which lay asleep on my bundle of rugs--and I guessed what fear it was had tamed her pride to flight. "His power in England is absolute. We learned that it was his purpose to arrest me, and determined to leave England. But our very household was full of spies, and though we chose a time when Clarence, our steward, whom we had long suspected of being Gardiner's chief tool, was away, Philip, his deputy, gained a clew to our design, and watched us. We gave him the slip with difficulty, leaving our luggage, but he dogged and overtook us, and the rest you know." I bowed. As I gazed at her, my admiration, I know, shone in my eyes. She looked, as she stood on the deck, an exile and fugitive, so gay, so bright, so indomitable, that in herself she was at once a warranty and an omen of better times. The breeze had heightened her color and loosened here and there a tress of her auburn hair. No wonder Master Bertie looked proudly on his Duchess. Suddenly a thing I had clean forgotten flashed into my mind, and I thrust my hand into my pocket. The action was so abrupt that it attracted their attention, and when I pulled out a packet--two packets--there were three pairs of eyes upon me. The seal dangled from one missive. "What have you there?" the Duchess asked briskly, for she was a woman, and curious. "Do you carry the deeds of your property about with you?"