“And what of the country?” he said.  “What do they say there?” He took a peach from the carved roundel in the centre of the table, and seemed absorbed in its contemplation.

Ralph had had some scruples at first about reporting private conversations, but Cromwell had quieted them long since, chiefly by the force of his personality, and partly by the argument that a man’s duty to the State over-rode his duty to his friends, and that since only talk that was treasonable would be punished, it was simpler to report all conversations in general that had any suspicious bearing, and that he himself was most competent to judge whether or no they should be followed up.  Ralph, too, had become completely reassured by now that no injury would be done to his own status among his friends, since his master had never yet made direct use of any of his information in such a manner as that it was necessary for Ralph to appear as a public witness.  And again, too, he had pointed out that the work had to be done, and that was better for the cause of justice and mercy that it should be done by conscientious rather than by unscrupulous persons.

He talked to him now very freely about the conversations in his father’s house, knowing that Cromwell did not want more than a general specimen sketch of public feeling in matters at issue.

“They have great faith in the Maid of Kent, sir,” he said.  “My brother-in-law, Nicholas, spoke of her prophecy of his Grace’s death.  It is the devout that believe in her; the ungodly know her for a fool or a knave.”

“Filii hujus saeculi prudentiores sunt,”—­quoted Cromwell gravely.  “Your brother-in-law, I should think, was a child of light.”

“He is, sir.”

“I should have thought so.  And what else did you hear?”

“There is a good deal of memory of the Lady Katharine, sir.  I heard the foresters talking one day.”

“What of the Religious houses?”

Ralph hesitated.

“My brother Christopher has just gone to Lewes,” he said.  “So I heard more of the favourable side, but I heard a good deal against them, too.  There was a secular priest talking against them one day, with our chaplain, who is a defender of them.”

“Who was he?” asked Cromwell, with the same sharp, oblique glance.

“A man of no importance, sir; the parson of Great Keynes.”

“The Holy Maid is in trouble,” went on the other after a minute’s silence.  “She is in my Lord of Canterbury’s hands, and we can leave her there.  I suppose she will be hanged.”

Ralph waited.  He knew it was no good asking too much.

“What she said of the King’s death and the pestilence is enough to cast her,” went on Cromwell presently.  “And Bocking and Hadleigh will be in his hands soon, too.  They do not know their peril yet.”